THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

RIVERSIDE 


THE  TYPES  OF  ENGLISH   LITERATURE 

UNDER   THE  GENERAL   EDITORSHIP   OF 


THE  POPULAR  BALLAD.   By  Professor  Francis  B.  Gummere 
of  Haverford  College. 

THE    LITERATURE    OF    ROGUERY.     By  Professor   F.  W. 
Chandler  of  the  Brooklyn  I'olytechnic  Institute. 

TRAGEDY.     By  Professor  A.  H.  Thorndike  of  Columbia  Uni- 
versity. 

THE  ENGLISH   LYRIC.    By  Professor  Felix  E.  Schelling  of 
the  University  of  Pennsylvania. 

IN  PRE  PA  RA  TION 

THE  PASTORAL.     By  Professor  Jefferson  B.  Fletcher  of  Co- 
lumbia University. 

THE  ALLEGORY.  By  Professor  William  A.  Neilson  of  Harvard 
University. 

LITERARY  CRITICISM.    By  Professor  Irving  Babbitt  of  Har- 
vard University. 

THE  SHORT  STORY,  MEDIEVAL  AND  MODERN.    By  Pro- 
fessor VV.  M.  Hart  of  the  University  of  California. 

THE  MASQUE.    By  Professor  J.  W.  CunliSe  of  the  University 
of  Wisconsin. 

THE    SAINTS'   LEGENDS.    By  G.  H.  Gerould,  Preceptor  in 
Princeton  University. 

CHARACTER  WRITING.  By  Professor  Chester  N.  Greenough 
of  the  University  of  Illinois. 

THE  NOVEL.    By  Professor  J.  D.  M.  Ford  of  Harvard  Uni- 
versity. 

HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 
Boston  and  New  York 


€f)e  Cppc^  of  <en0lt^lj  Hitcraturc 

EDITED    BY 
WILLL\M  ALLAN  NEILSON 


THE  ENGLISH   LYRIC 

BY 

FELIX  E.  SCHELLING 


COPYRIGHT,    I913,    BY    FELIX   E.    SCHELLING 
ALL    KIGHTS    RESERVED 

Published  March  iqij 


TO 

MY  FELLOW-LOVERS   OF   LITERATURE 

AND   LABORERS  IN  HER   FIELDS 

THE   MEMBERS   OF  THE   DEPARTMENT   OF   ENGLISH 

OF    THE 

UNIVERSITY   OF   PENNSYLVANIA 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2008  with  funding  from 

IVIicrosoft  Corporation 


http://www.archive.org/details/englishlyricOOsche 


PREFACE 

In  the  following  account  of  the  English  Lyric,  its  origin  in 
early  times  and  its  progress  through  the  ages  to  our  day, 
I  have  endeavored  to  write  always  from  impressions, 
renewed,  direct,  and  made  at  first  hand.  But  it  would  be 
madness  in  these  days  of  commentary  not  to  know  as 
much  as  possible  of  the  wise  and  the  unwise  things  that 
have  been  said  by  those  who  have  traversed  this  fascinat- 
ing path  before  me.  Independence  of  judgment,  even 
though  it  lead  to  singularity  at  times,  is  the  most  precious 
right  of  criticism;  but  a  becoming  respect  for  fellow- 
workers  is  alike  courteous  and  judicious. 

It  was  my  original  intention  to  include,  in  this  book  on 
the  English  lyric,  a  chapter  on  the  lyrical  poets  of  our 
American  Commonwealth  and  the  colonies  of  the  mother 
country,  whether  they  spread  over  new  continents  or  dot 
far  distant  seas.  This  seemed  the  more  desirable  as  it  is  a 
canon  of  my  faith  that  hmguagc  alone  is  the  criterion  of 
literary  unity,  wherewith  the  accidents  of  political  union 
or  severance  have  little  to  do.  On  trial,  however,  it  was 
soon  clear  that  a  treatment  of  our  American  authors 
which  could  satisfy  alike  the  exacting  claims  of  neighbor- 
hood and  reasonable  proportion  was  quite  impossible;  and 
the  plan  was  abandoned.  It  is  as  yet  contrary  to  tlic 
traditions  of  criticism  to  treat  of  American  writers  as  a 


viii  PREFACE 

part  and  parcel  of  the  literature  of  our  common  race. 
The  acceptance  of  this  rule  of  practice  lightens  materially 
the  task  of  British  critics;  while  it  enables  those  American 
born  to  draw  their  portraits  of  our  own  authors  on  a  scale, 
at  times,  of  disproportioned  importance.  In  a  general 
history  of  poetry  in  the  English  tongue,  however  minute, 
Thomas  Pringle  is  mentionable  for  one  poem  which 
Coleridge  had  the  discernment  to  single  out  for  praise. 
In  an  anthology  of  South  African  verse,  Pringle  dilates 
into  a  considerable  figure,  "the  father  of  South  African 
poetry."  This  case  is  extreme;  and  yet  the  parallel  is 
not  wholly  misleading.  "A  single  chapter  in  a  book  of 
any  size  in  which  to  treat  Bryant,  Whittier,  Emerson, 
Longfellow,  Lowell,  Holmes,  Poe,  Whitman,  Lanier,  and 
Aldrich!"  exclaims  a  fellow-countryman  in  dismay;  while 
the  London  critic  superciliously  asks  in  cool  print:  "Has 
America  produced  a  poet?"  Who  is  to  say?  Who  can 
draw  with  the  object  so  out  of  focus? 

The  bibliography,  in  a  volume  dealing  with  so  many 
names,  can  make  no  attempt  at  completeness.  All  refer- 
ences to  editions  of  single  authors  and,  for  the  most  part, 
criticism  referable  to  individuals,  has  been  rigorously 
omitted.  References  to  current  detailed  bibliographies, 
such  as  those  of  The  Cambridge  History  of  English  Lit- 
erature, should  suflBce  even  for  the  student.  On  the  other 
hand,  an  attempt  has  been  made  to  include  a  large 
number  of  titles  of  lyrical  anthologies  with  their  attend- 
ant introductions  and  to  supply  the  titles  of  the  more 
important  books  dealing  with  the  lyric  as  such. 


PREFACE  ix 

I  acknowledge  my  special  indebtedness  to  the  several 
valuable  articles  of  my  friend  and  colleague,  Professor 
Cornelius  Weygandt,  on  contemporary  poets  in  The 
Sewanee  Review,  The  Alumni  Register  of  the  University 
of  Pennsylvania,  and  elsewhere.  I  regret  that  his  book, 
Irish  Plays  and  Playwrights,  now  in  the  hands  of  the 
printer,  was  not  available  for  my  use  before  the  comple- 
tion of  my  text.  The  second  chapter  of  this  book  owes 
much  to  the  critical  suggestion  of  another  friend  and  col- 
league. Professor  Clarence  G.  Child.  Still  other  helps 
and  encouragement  have  also  been  mine,  as  always,  at 
the  hands  of  others  of  the  Department  of  English;  whilst 
last,  though  by  no  means  least,  I  record  with  pleasure 
the  courteous  and  always  capable  supervision  of  Pro- 
fessor W.  A.  Neilson,  the  general  editor  of  this  scries. 

F.  E.  S. 

U^avEBSITY  OF  Pennsylvania,  January,  1913. 


CONTENTS 

I.    Definitions 1 

n.    The  Medieval  Lyric 9 

in.    Lyrical  Poetry  in  the  England  of  the  Tudors    31 
IV.    The  Lyric  in  the  Reigns  of  the  First  Two 

Stuart  Monarchs 73 

V.    The  Lyrical  Decline;  from  the  Restoration 

to  the  Death  of  Cowper 112 

VI.    The  Lyric  and  the  Romantic  Revival  .    ,    .  149 

VII.    The  Victorian  Lyrists 194 

VIII.    Some  Successors  of  Swinburne  and  Meredith  204 

Bibliography 301 

Index 321 


THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 


CHAPTER  I 

DEFINITIONS 


HE  primary'  conception  involved  in  the  term, 
"lyric"  has  always  to  do  with  song;  and  it  is| 
the  song-Uke  quality  of  the  lyric  that  falls  1 
most  conspicuously  into  contrast  with  the  I 
epic  or  telling  quality  of  narrative  verse.    But  this  kin-  1 
ship  of  the  Ij'ric  with  song  involves  another  important  \ 
contrast.    When  Aristotle  declared  music  the  most  imi- 
tative of  the  arts,  he  meant  that  music  reflected  more 
directly  the  feelings  and  passions  of  men  than  words 
wliich,  however  poetic,  can  merely  describe  or  symbolic- 
ally express  them.   So,  too,  the  lyric  is  concerned  with 
the  poet,  his  thoughts,  his  emotions,  his  moods,  and  his 
I)assions.    In  the  lyric   the  individual   singer  emerges, 
conspicuous  in  the  potency  of  his  art.  We  have  no  longer, 
as  in  Homer,  a  sonorous  mouthpiece  for  the  deeds  of 
Achilles  or  the  fated  wanderings  of  Ulysses,  but,  as  in 
Sai)i)ho,   the  passionate  throbbings  of  a  human   heart 
seeking  artistic  expression.     With   the  lyric  subjective 
poetry  begins. 

But  the  lyric  is  not  the  only  kind  of  poetry  that  dciija. 
with  human  emotion;  for  close  beside  it  stands  I  lie  drama 
with  its  picture  of  complex  human  life  and  passion  in 


2  THE    ENGLISH   LYRIC 

action  jind  interaction.  The  lyric  deals  with  passion  and  I 
emotion  in  their  simplicity  and  as  such.  For  if  a  poem 
detail  more  story  than  is  suflScient  to  make  plain  the 
situation  out  of  which  the  emotion  of  the  poem  arises, 
it  is  to  that  extent  an  epic  or  narrative  poem.  And  if  a 
poem  involve  a  conflict,  the  outcome  of  a  succession  of 
events  or  the  result  of  a  conflict  in  character  or  person- 
ality, the  poem  is  to  that  degree  dramatic.  In  words 
derived  from  the  technical  sciences,  dramatic  poetry  is 
dynamic;  lyric  poetry  is  static.  Hence  the  simplicity,  the 
brevity,  and  the  intensity  of  the  finest  lyrical  poetry;  and 
hence  the  argument,  sometimes  urged,  that  in  the  lyric 
alone  have  we  the  actual  spirit  and  essence  of  poetry,  and 
that  the  epic  and  the  drama  become  poetry  only  in  pro- 
portion as  they  contain  the  elements  that  add  the  soul  of 
passion  and  the  wings  of  song. 

It  is  a  moot  question  still  with  the  dogmatists  as  to 
whether  or  not  rhythm  is  the  "essential  fact  of  poetry  ";  ^ 
though  few  will  go  so  far  as  to  declare  that  "unmetrical" 
and  "unpoetical"  are  interchangeable  terms  among  the 
criteria  of  the  poetical  art.  Lyrical  poetry^jnore  than,  any 
other,  however,  demands  thejiid-oi  those  devices  of  lan- 
guage which  ally  hunjan  speech  Jta  music.  Rhythm  or- 1 
dered  witF  artisticvariety  on  the  basis  of  an  organic  regu- 
larity; the  recurrence  of  stress,  pause,  line,  and  stanza  so 
that  the  pattern  is  repeated  though  with  individual  dis- 

1 
'  For  a  discussion  of  this  topic,  with  the  conclusions  of  which  the  pre- 
sent writer  does  not  agree,  see  F.  B.  Gummere,  The  Beginnings  of  Poetry, 
New  York,  1901,  chapter  ii. 


DEFINITIONS  3 

tinction;  melody  in  the  sound  and  succession  of  words  and  i 
harmony  in  their  fitness  for  the  thought  and  its  changes  — 
such  are  some  of  the  graces  of  form  demanded  of  the  lyrist. 
That  the  language  of  strong  emotion  often  takes  to  itself, 
both  in  literature  and  in  life,  a  rhythmic  regularity,  is  an 
observation  common  to  everj'^  school  rhetoric,  and,  unlike 
some  such  observations,  literally  true.  And  it  is  not  less 
true  that  emotion  serves  to  clarify  thought  and  add  at 
times  the  flash  of  wit  and  the  color  of  figurative  expression. 
In  the  lyric  better  than  in  other  varieties  of  poetry  can 
we  appreciate  Wordsworth's  famous  definition  of  poetry 
as  "the  spontaneous  overflow  of  powerful  feelings,"  even 
if  the  artistrj'  and  elaboration  of  many  an  individual 
poem  of  the  type  compel  us  likewise  to  recall  Words- 
worth's added  words  "recollected  [we  may  interpolate, 
'and  lovingly  wrought  out']  in  tranquillity." 

The  lyric,  as  we  have  seen,  then,  is  personal  and  sub- 
jective, concerned  with  the  poet  himself,  his  thoughts, 
emotions,  and  sentiments.  But  this  does  not  demand 
that  lyrical  poetrj^  be  of  necessity  autobiographical  or 
fail  of  its  end,  the  production  of  an  artistic  impression 
of  subjective  reality;  for  a  poet  may  succeed  at  times 
in  projecting  his  personality  —  so  to  speak  —  into  the 
person  of  another  and  speak  and  feel  unerringly  as  that 
person  speaks  and  feels.  This  power  —  and  it  is  possessed 
only  by  the  greatest  —  is  usually  called  dramatic  instinct; 
but  in  so  far  as  it  is  portir  it  is  really  lyrical,  that  is, 
wliolly  subjective.  When  Coleridge,  for  cxanii)lc,  exclaims 
enthusiastically  of  Shakespeare,  "What  maiden  has  he 


4  THE   ENGLISH   LYRIC 

not  taught  delicacy,  what  counsellor  has  he  not  taught 
statecraft?"  we  find  the  critic  recognizing  that  Shake- 
speare has  so  transfused  himself  into  the  personalities  of 
liis  imagined  personages  that  he  realizes  their  emotions 
to  a  degree  beyond  that  which  we  may  reasonably  expect 
of  real  beings  under  like  circumstances;  that  is,  he  has,  by 
an  exercise  of  a  subtle  artistic  sympathy,  so  typified  the 
emotions  of  each  that  he  has  realized  to  us  an  art  beyond 
nature.  This  is  a  subjective  process,  one  inherent  in  the 
large  heart  acted  on  by  the  strong  brain  of  the  master- 
poet.  It  is  a  matter  of  broad  sympathies  and  unerring 
judgment;  but  it  is  also  a  matter  of  artistic  insight,  and 
has  little  to  do  with  that  "dramatic  instinct"  which, 
admirable  in  its  own  nature,  is  concerned  more  or  less 
with  the  objective  arrangement  of  material,  the  framing 
of  situation,  and  the  heightening  of  effect. 
.  It  is  a  demand  of  the  lyric,  which  it  shares  with  all  good 
Ipoetrj',  that  it  unite  universality  of  feeling  with  unity  of 
norm.  Turning,  as  the  lyric  must  ever  turn,  "on  some 
/single  thought,  feeling,  or  situation,"  it  is  easily  unbal- 

(anced  and  its  artistry  destroyed.  Most  repugnant  to  this 
fragility  is  any  attempt  to  hang  on  the  delicate  structure 
of  a  lyrical  poem  the  pendant  of  a  moral;  for  the  mood 
induced  by  the  poem  thus  becomes  merely  a  means  to  an 
ulterior  end  and  is  destroyed  in  the  very  moment  of  its 
birth.  Unity  of  subject  requires  a  certain  degree  of  brevity 
and  the  elimination  of  most  of  the  elements  which  other 
varieties  of  verse  possess  in  common  with  prose,  elements 
justified  in  lyrical  poetry  only  to  the  degree  in  which  they 


DEFINITIONS  5 

make  for  intelligibility.  Thus,  we  must  trespass  neither 
in  the  direction  of  action,  mixed  motives,  nor  in  that  of  an 
overplus  of  description  or  narrative,  or  the  poem  ceases 
to  be  lyrical.  Unity  of  form  follows  unity  of  subject  and  ; 
adds  to  the  effect  of  concentration.  It  is  inconceivable  j 
that  the  lyric,  which  flourishes  throughout  English  liter- 
ature in  so  endless  a  variety,  should  be  bound  down  to 
conventional  form;  and  yet,  the  design  or  pattern  once 
chosen  in  a  given  case,  it  must  be  preserved  with  the 
inevitability  of  the  recurrent  blossom  of  a  chosen  flower. 
Universality  is  obviously  that  quality  which  makes  a 
work  of  art  "not  of  an  age  but  for  all  time";  and  this 
quality  is  achieved  only  when  the  poet  recognizes  and 
makes  his  own  those  essential  elements  which  give  per- 
manency to  his  theme  and  discards  the  accidental  and 
the  evanescent.  The  most  perishable  form  of  verse,  for 
example,  is  satire;  for  although  it  rises  at  times  to  general 
applications  because  of  the  perennial  moulds  into  which 
human  vice  and  human  folly  are  apt  to  run,  satire  is, 
none  the  less,  apt  to  take  the  guise  of  concrete  and  passing 
allusion.  Hall,  Poi)0,  and  Butler  must  be  read  with  notes 
not  only  for  this  reason,  but  because  satire  naturally  runs 
to  the  type  gathered  into  classes,  and  to  caricature  which 
emi)hasi7X's  the  non-essential  lines  of  the  picture  and  the 
j)(TishH})lc  traits  of  humanity.  The  drama  labors  under  a 
similar  difficulty  from  the  necessity  which  ties  the  sccme, 
t(»  a  greater  or  less  degree,  to  the  accidents  of  time  and 
I)Ia(e.  The  lyric,  on  the  other  hand,  from  its  siinj)li(ity 
and  celebration  of  universal  feeling,  has  a  better  chance 


6  THE   ENGLISH  LYRIC 

of  permanency.  While  men  are  lovers  and  women  fair, 
we  shall  take  pleasure  in  the  thousands  of  changes  sung 
upon  the  immortal  theme  of  love;  and  while  the  condi- 
tions of  human  life  are  what  they  are  and  ever  have  been, 
we  shall  love  to  have  the  poets  tell  us: 

Gather  ye  rosebuds  while  ye  may. 
Old  Time  is  still  a-flying; 

or  listen  to  the  noble,  timeworn  theme: 

The  glories  of  our  blood  and  state 

Are  shadows,  not  substantial  things; 
There  is  no  armor  against  fate; 

Death  lays  his  icy  hand  on  kings: 
Sceptre  and  crown 
Must  tumble  down. 
And  in  the  dust  be  equal  made 
With  the  poor  crooked  scythe  and  spade. 

The  range  of  the  lyric  is  the  gamut  of  human  emotion, 
and  nothing  could  be  more  inept  than  the  current  notion 
of  a  lyric  as  merely  a  poem  of  love.  The  lyrist  may  sing 
the  raptures  of  a  pure  soul  in  communion  with  God,  or 
the  apples  of  Sodom  that  turn  to  dust  and  bitterness 
between  the  teeth  of  the  lost  sinner:  and  there  is  much 
between  hell  and  heaven.  Indeed,  here  as  elsewhere, 
there  can  be  no  limits  set  to  art.  Wit,  humor,  folly, 
fancy,  cynicism,  misanthropy  (if  it  be  "  literatesque  "  like 
Diogenes'  tub),  —  all  may  serve  the  lyrist.  The  gods 
laughed  on  Olympus  and  went  to  feast  and  revel  with  the 
Ethiopians.  Literature  has  no  need  for  the  limitations  of 
a  false  dignity,  for  life  does  not  know  them.  And  yet 
there  are  dangers  to  the  lyric  in  some  emotions.   Thus, 


DEFINITIONS  7 

misanthropy  is  apt  to  become  rhetorical  and  egoistic, 
both  of  which  qualities  destroy  art  because  they  limit  its 
universality.  So,  also,  cynicism  often  becomes  danger- 
ously intellectualized,  didactic,  or  ethically  unsound;  and 
all  of  these  things  are  repugnant  to  poetry.  These  topics 
will  find  fitter  discussion  at  the  points  in  the  history  of 
the  lyric  wherein  we  shall  meet  them.  In  conclusion  of 
these  matters  be  it  remarked  that  in  anthologies  of  Eng- 
lish poetry  the  epigram  has  sometimes  trespassed  on  the 
domain  of  the  lyric.  The  epigram  is  often  musical  and 
commonly  short,  and  here  the  resemblance  between  it 
and  the  lyric  ends.  For  the  epigram  is  intellectual, 
rhetorical,  and  conscious,  addressed  to  stir  in  the  hearer 
an  approval  of  art;  the  lyric  is  emotional,  poetic,  and^un- 
conscious.in  so  far  as  a  piece  of  artistry  often  involving 
a  loving  elaboration  may  exist  for  its  own  end  and  only 
secondarily  for  the  pleasure  which  it  is  its  legitimate  func- 
tion to  occasion  in  the  hearer  or  reader.  However,  it 
would  be  unfair  to  the  lyric  to  exclude  from  its  domain 
that  admirable  variety  of  verse  which  has  of  late  been 
denominated  vers  de  societc.  Here,  although,  as  one  of  its 
most  successful  exponents  has  i)ut  it,  "a  boudoir  decorum 
is,  or  ougiit  always  to  be,  preserved;  where  sentiment 
never  surges  inlo  passion,  and  where  humor  never  over- 
flows into  boisterous  merriment,"  ^  there  is  yet  abundant 
opportunity  for  the  display  of  some  of  the  daintiest  graces 
of  the  poetic  art.  The  line  of  demarcation  is  difTuMill  to 
draw:  clearly  the  malevolence  of  satire  is  not  lyrical,  nor 
*  F.  Locker-Lampson,  in  preface  to  Lyra  Elcgantiarum,  p.  ix. 


8  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

the  broad  humor  of  parody  and  farce,  any  more  than  the 
ballad,  where  narrative  outweighs  the  emotions  involved, 
or  the  drama,  where  action  transforms  the  unity  of  a 
single  mood  into  the  changing  pageant  of  passion  in  clash 
with  passion.  That  our  conception  of  the  lyric,  like  that 
of  everything  else,  has  broadened  with  the  process  of  the 
suns,  it  will  be  one  of  the  provinces  of  this  book  to  make 
plain  in  its  place.  For  the  present  let  this  suffice  for  the 
delimitation  of  our  subject. 


CHAPTER  II 


THE   MEDIEVAL   LYRIC 


ERE  the  subject  of  this  book  the  lyrical  ele- 
ment in  English  literature,  much  might  be 
written  of  poetry  in  song  in  Anglo-Saxon 
times  when  all  were  called  on  in  turn  to  sing, 
from  Hrothgar  on  his  throne  and  the  hero  Beowulf  beside 
him  to  Ccedmon,  humble  attendant  on  his  Abbess  Hilda 
and  for  the  nonce  a  keeper  of  beasts.  But  such  song  was 
purely  epic,  and  subjective  only  in  the  sense  in  which  the 
ballad  may  be  said  to  be  subjective  as  representing  the 
unified  sentiment  of  the  nation  or  tribe.  It  is  not  denied, 
however,  that  there  was  poetry  in  Anglo-Saxon  times 
more  personal  in  its  note.  Two  poems  of  an  early  date 
recount  the  cxi)ericnces  of  the  professional  singer  or  poet 
known  as  the  gleeman  or  scop.  In  "Widsith,"  that  far- 
farer  discourses  with  pride  in  his  profession  of  his  wander- 
ings and  of  the  peoples  and  kings  that  he  has  known.  In 
the  "Deor"  a  gleeman  laments  his  loss  of  the  favor  of  his 
lord,  and  consoles  himself  with  like  example  of  the  vicissi- 
tude of  fortune  and  with  the  recurrent  refrain  —  the  only 
example  of  a  true  refrain  in  Anglo-Saxon  poetry  —  "That 
sorrow  went  over,  so  may  tliis."  On  this  Brandl  justly 
observes  that  a  refrain  as  an  expression  of  an  emotion  is 
ever  and  under  all  conditions  lyrical.'  "Widsith,"  if  it 
*  CeachiclUe  der  allenglischen  Lileralur,  Ik-rlin,  1908,  p.  ;J5. 


10  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

ever  possessed  an  original  personal  significance,  has  be- 
come by  additions  little  more  than  a  list  of  names;  the 
"  Deor  "  retains  more  of  the  lyrical  quality.  More  unmis- 
takably lyric  than  either  of  these  is  the  beautiful  poem 
entitled  "The  Seafarer,"  in  which  one  who  so  journeys 
tells  of  the  hardships  and  lonesomeness  of  the  sea,  only 
to  alternate  this  mood  with  the  awful  joy  of  heart  that 
comes  to  him  who  answers  its  imperative  and  insistent 
call.  "The  Seafarer  "  is  more  grim  and  urgent  in  its  earlier 
form,  before  the  Christian  consolations  of  the  later  addi- 
tions blunted  its  primitive  sentiment  with  a  religious 
application.  Another  Anglo-Saxon  poem  may  be  men- 
tioned, "The  Ruin,"  in  which,  with  a  fullness  of  elegiac 
emotion  hardly  to  be  expected  of  so  early  an  age,  the  poet 
moralizes  over  the  fallen  glory  of  Roman  luxury  and 
grandeur,  though  he  knows  this  not  and  hyperbolically 
attributes  these  mighty  walls,  now  broken  into  barrows, 
to  the  handiwork  of  giants.  If  we  turn  from  the  pre- 
historic and  traditional  period  of  our  first  poetry  to  the 
earliest  period  of  English  literary  culture,  we  find  still 
a  poetic  literature  almost  entirely  epic.  Cynewulf,  "Eng- 
land's first  great  poet,"  practised  an  art  which  is  essen- 
tially epic,  although  the  personal  note  is  struck,  not  only 
in  the  several  passages  in  which  the  poet  has  inserted 
the  runes  forming  his  name,  but  in  many  another  place, 
especially  in  the  "  Christ,"  and  in  the  impassioned  "Vision 
of  the  Rood,"  which  all  true  lovers  of  poetry  would  fain 
continue  to  believe  the  work  of  Cynewulf,  would  the 
critics  allow  them.    With  a  mention  of  the  indubitably 


THE  MEDLEVAL  LYKIC  11 

elegiac  quality  of  "The  Wanderer,"  like  the  "Deor  "  the 
lament  of  a  gleeman  for  lost  and  better  days,  and  by  some 
held  to  contain  the  most  lyrical  passage  in  all  Anglo- 
Saxon,  this  enumeration  of  the  lyrical  element  in  our 
earliest  English  poetry  must  come  to  a  close.  ^  The  riddles, 
from  their  ingenuity  of  form  and  thought  and  from  their 
appeal  to  a  like  quality  of  mind  in  the  reader,  belong  to 
the  category  of  the  epigram,  not  of  the  lyric.  We  may 
accept  as  lyrical  the  joy  of  battle  and  the  occasionally 
vivid  bits  of  suggestive  description  to  be  found  in  the 
epic  poems  both  national  and  religious.  Otherwise  the 
poetic  emotion  of  Anglo-Saxon  poetry  is  elegiac,  and  the 
lyric,  so  to  speak,  is  as  yet  held  in  solution, 
I  Another  question  now  confronts  us,  the  relation  of  the 
lyric  to  that  considerable,  if  dubiously  defined,  body  of 
verse  which,  handed  down  from  generation  to  generation 
without  the  intervention  of  scop,  gleeman,  or  minstrel, 
is  ultimately  referable  to  the  tribal  community  seeking 
communal  expression  in  song.  Actual  folk-song  is  for  the 
'most  part  a  matter  of  inference;  for  when  song  is  written 
down,  the  conscious  artist  has  already  intervened.  And 
yet  it  is  not  to  be  denied  that  much  i)opular  poetry,  lyrical 
and  other,  still  preserved  in  England  and  elsewhere, 

*  These  lines  (J)2-9fi)  of  "Tlie  Wanderer  "  have  been  called  the  most 
lyrical  in  all  our  An^^lo-Saxon  ver.se: 
Ilwffir  cwora  ni(;arg?  hwser  cwom  mago?  hwcer  cwom  ma)'}>umgyfa? 
IlwSr  cwOm  .symbia  Rcsetu?  hwier  sindon  seledrCamas? 
Ealii  brorlit  l)unc!  cala  hyrnwiga! 
Ealfi  J^fodncs  I'rym!  hu  seo  IrfiK  gcwat. 
Genii)  under  nihlhelm,  swa  hCo  no  wicre! 


n  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

strikes  back  its  roots  deep  in  what  must  have  been  the 
primitive  song  of  the  folk.  As  to  the  nature  of  this  basis 
for  the  superstructure  of  the  poetry  of  art  the  reader  must 
be  referred  elsewhere.^  We  are  told,  for  example,  that 
the  earliest  written  poetry  of  the  irouveres  "discovers"  the 
lyric  of  art  in  the  very  act  of  its  emergence  out  of  the 
rustic  amatory  songs  of  the  folk,  sung  with  accompany- 
ing dance  at  their  festivals  by  the  throng,  and  accurately 
identified  by  the  scandalized  clergy  with  survivals  of 
pagan  worship. 2  No  such  transition  as  this  can  be  traced 
in  the  literature  of  England.  For,  as  we  have  seen,  the 
lyrical  element  of  Anglo-Saxon  poetry  is  at  best  no  more 
I  than  elegiac;  and  the  true  lyric  when  it  came  to  England, 
:  like  so  much  else,  was  introduced  in  the  form,  in  the  spirit, 
^and  even,  at  first,  in  the  language  of  France. 

As  to  the  lyric  of  the  Middle  Ages  in  general,  it  is  most 
deeply  traced,  as  is  well  known,  in  Provencal  dancing- 
songs  that  were  features  immemorially  of  the  festivals  of 
the  folk,  wherein  were  sung  the  praises  of  spring,  the  union 
of  youth  and  joy  and  the  like,  reduced  almost  to  an  obliga- 
tory formula.  Fostered  by  the  social  amenities  and  ele- 
gances of  castle  and  court  that  now  came  more  and  more 
to  temper  the  rudeness  of  earlier  times,  these  songs  de- 
veloped, in  the  eleventh  century  and  in  the  hands  of 
the  troubadours,  into  a  highly  conventional  and  artificial 

1  See  especially  F.  B.  Gummere,  The  Popular  Ballad,  Boston,  1907,  in 
the  present  Series. 

2  E.  K.  Chambers,  "Some  Aspects  of  the  Mediffival  Lyric,"  Early 
English  Lyrics,  London,  1907,  p.  201. 


THE  MEDIEVAL  LYRIC  13 

literature  of  the  art  of  love.  This  was  almost  altogether 
lyric;  and  in  it  great  importance  was  attached  to  certain 
refinements  of  speech  and  conduct  entitled  "  courioisie,'* 
which  enjoined  a  species  of  fashionable  gallantry,  in  its 
ideals,  whatever  its  practices,  alike  remote  from  sensu- 
ality and  from  actual  courtship  with  the  wedlock  of  the 
lovers  in  view.  This  troubadour  poetry  was  wholly  aristo- 
cratic, and  long  is  the  list  of  knights,  nobles,  and  even 
kings  that  grace  its  annals.  But  the  professional  trouba- 
dours are  at  least  as  numerous;  and  as  the  popularity  of 
this  poetry  spread  from  its  cradle  in  Poitou  and  Limousin, 
first  to  Catalonia  and  Italy,  and  later  from  the  south  over 
France  proper  and  England,  the  rigidity  of  its  rules  and 
usages  was  relaxed  as  its  examples  were  imitated  in  new 
tongues  and  under  novel  conditions.  The  double  mar- 
riage of  Eleanor  of  Guienne  was  an  important  means  of 
this  diffusion  of  the  "courtois"  lyric  northward.  As  the 
daughter  of  William  of  Poitou,  "the  father  of  the  trouba- 
dours," this  cultivated  lady  presided  over  the  court  at 
Bordeaux,  extending  a  bountiful  and  encouraging  hand 
to  the  j)oets  of  her  own  race.  Later,  as  queen  of  France 
for  fift(!en  years,  and  lastly,  from  1154  to  1206,  as  queen 
of  the  English  Henry  II  (then  sovereign  as  well  of  half  of 
France),  Queen  Eleanor  spread  licr  taste  for  social  and 
poetical  pleasures  and  slrctclied  forth  her  patronage  as 
far  as  the  bounds  of  the  language  of  France.  Provencal 
(rnubadours  came  thus  to  live  for  i)rotract(Ml  i)eri()ds  of 
time  in  England;  and  Frenchmen  and  men  of  iMiglish 
birth  attendant  on  the  court  of  King  Henry  learned  at 


U  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

first  hand  the  courtois  poetry  of  Provence,^  a  matter  of 
no  small  import  to  the  growth  of  the  lyric  of  art. 

Another  influence  that  went  to  the  preparation  of  the 
English  lyric  was  that  of  the  religious  poetry  of  the  day. 
The  solidarity  of  the  mediaeval  church  and  of  mediieval 
education,  cemented  as  it  was  with  Latin,  the  universal 
tongue  of  learning,  needs  only  to  be  stated  to  be  recog- 
nized. There  was  no  scholarship  outside  of  the  church. 
The  clergy  shaded  down  from  the  decorous  officers  of 
place  to  Chaucer's  "poor  parson"  and  the  monastic  or- 
ders, through  all  degrees  of  friars,  mendicant  and  unat- 
tached, to  the  wandering  scholars,  as  notorious  for  the 
wildness  of  their  lives  as  for  their  wit  and  talents,  on  occa- 
sion, as  mere  minstrels.  The  Latin  formulae  of  service 
and  Latin  hymns  were  ever  on  the  clerics'  lips,  and,  as  the 
higher  clergy  in  England  for  a  couple  of  centuries  were 
almost  wholly  French-speaking,  French  culture  permeated 
the  cloister  and  the  abbey  as  well  as  the  court.  It  is  not 
surprising,  then,  to  find  the  influence  of  Latin  hymns  on 
early  English  religious  poetry  strongly  tinctured  with  ele- 
ments derived  from  the  secular  love  songs  of  troubadour 
and  trouvere.  It  was  this  that  led  to  the  extensive  Marian 
verse  in  which  were  extolled  the  five  joys  of  the  Virgin 
and  the  like.  Few  of  these  early  religious  poems  are  in 
any  degree  lyrical,  although  an  exception  may  be  urged 
in  the  case  of  the  beautiful  poem  entitled  "A  Love  Rune," 
written  by  Thomas  de  Hales,  an  eloquent  discant  on  the 

^  On  this  whole  subject,  see  especially  Gaston  Paris,  La  Liitirature 
Fran^aise  au  Moyen  Age,  Paris,  1890,  pp.  175  ff.  and  18  Q. 


THE  MEDIEVAL  LYRIC  15 

vanity  of  earthly  love  and  the  sanctity  of  virginity.  More 
certainly  lyrical  is  the  macaronic  "Song  to  the  Virgin," 
the  elaborate  and  easy  flow  of  the  stanza  of  which  is  note- 
worthy. 

Of  on  that  is  so  fayr  and  bright 

Velud  maris  stella. 
Brighter  than  the  day  is  light, 

Parejis  et  puclla ; 
Ic  crie  to  the,  thou  se  to  me, 
Levedy,  preye  thi  sone  for  me. 

Tarn  pia. 
That  ic  mote  come  to  the, 
Maria  I 

Lyrically  effective,  too,  are  the  strong  elegiac  verses 
beginning 

Were  beth  they  biforen  us  weren, 
Houndes  ladden  and  hauckes  beren  ? 

reverberating  a  string  that  has  sounded  down  the  ages 
from  Anglo-Saxon  times  through  Villon's  ''Mais  ou  sont 
les  neiges  d'antan"  and  Nash's  "Queens  have  died  young 
and  fair,"  and  will  resound  to  the  latest  lyrists  of  all  time. 

The  several  manuscripts  in  which  these  poems  occur 
date  variously  before  1250  and  towards  the  end  of  the 
thirteenth  century;  but  the  composition  of  these  poems, 
as  always  in  these  cases,  may  be  dated  backward  many 
years  with  probability.^  By  the  middle  of  the  thirteenth 
century,  poetry  in  English  had  come  fully  into  revival,  a 
f;u-t  well  established  by  the  lively  and  interesting  debate, 
The  Owl  and  the  Nightingale,  which  corresponds  in  point 

'  See  appendix,  "Sources  of  Texts,"  Early  English  Lyrics,  as  above. 


16  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

of  date  almost  precisely  with  the  poem  of  Hales.  The  Owl 
and  the  Nightingale  is  not  lyrical,  but  its  genuine  poetic 
merit,  the  ease  and  certainty  of  its  verse  with  the  purity 
of  its  English  vocabulary,  conspire  to  explain  why  the 
earliest  extant  mediaeval  lyrics  in  English,  both  sacred 
and  secular,  display  none  of  the  stuttering  simplicity  of 
nonage  and  experiment. 

Turning  now  to  the  earliest  extant  lyrics  that  are 
purely  secular  in  kind,  we  meet  with  three  little  snatches 
of  song,  all  of  them  set  to  music.  Two  retain  a  shadow 
of  the  Anglo-Saxon  melancholy;  the  third  is  the  famous 
"Cuckoo  Song." 

Summer  is  icumen  in, 

Lhude  sing  cuccu, 
Groweth  sed  and  bloweth  med 

And  springth  the  wde  nu. 
Sing  cuccu! 

Awe  bleteth  after  lomb, 

Lhouth  after  calve  cu; 
BuUuc  stirteth,  bucke  verteth; 

Murie  sing  cuccu. 
Cuccu,  cuccu, 

Wei  singes  thu,  cuccu, 

Ne  swik  thu  navcr  nu. 

Despite  the  spirit  and  natural  charm  of  this  little  lyric, 
we  must  be  careful  not  to  refer  it  to  either  the  folk  or 
to  too  unaffected  a  native-born  love  of  nature.  "The 
Cuckoo  Song"  appears  in  a  manuscript  the  earlier  por- 
tion of  which  is  supposed  to  have  been  written  in  the 
Abbey  of  Reading  about  the  year  1240.  It  is  accompanied 


THE  MEDLEVAL  LYRIC  17 

by  the  musical  notation  of  a  rota  or  rondel  (a  species  of 
song  not  unlike  the  later  canon),  with  explicit  Latin  direc- 
tions as  to  how  to  sing  it;  and  the  words  are  a  conscious 
poetical  adaptation  of  the  reverdie,  or  song  of  greeting  to 
spring,  well  known  in  France.  The  music  of  this  little 
song  has  received  praise  as  cordial  and  deserved  as  that 
bestowed  upon  its  fresh  and  natural  words. 

With  the  opening  of  the  fourteenth  century  the  manu- 
script remains  of  mediaeval  song  in  England  become  fuller. 
The  famous  Harleian  Manuscript  2253  alone  contains 
more  than  a  hundred  pieces  in  verse  and  prose,  Latin, 
Anglo-French,  and  English,  more  than  two  score  of  them 
lyrics  in  English;  and  there  are  some  six  or  seven  other 
manuscripts  the  contents  of  which  must  date  in  writing 
well  before  1400,  though  none  contain  so  large  a  body  as 
this.  Such  is  the  variety  of  these  poems,  the  uncertainty 
of  their  precise  time  of  writing,  and  the  diversity  of  the 
dialects  in  which  they  are  written,  that  enumeration 
rather  than  classification  must  suffice  to  set  them  before 
the  reader.  And  yet  certain  broad  lines  by  way  of  classi- 
fication are  not  impossible  of  dislinction.  There  are  the 
songs  of  the  minstrel,  the  poetry  of  the  cloister,  and  the 
lyrics  of  the  polite  poets,  although  it  is  not  always  quite 
certain  which  is  which;  and,  cleaving  through  this  three- 
fold distinction  by  reference  to  origin,  there  is  division 
by  way  of  theme  into  religious  and  secular  poetry.  The 
j)olite  poet  was  late  to  emerge,  and  we  may  defer  him  and 
his  work  for  the  moment. 

The  minstrelsy  of  the  Middle  Ages  seems  hardly  more 


18  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

separable  from  the  polite  poetry  of  troubadour  and 
irouvcre  than  the  songs  of  the  wandering  scholars  are 
separable  from  the  poetry  of  clerics  on  the  one  hand  and 
that  of  the  folk  on  the  other.  It  may  be  suspected  that 
when  the  polite  art  of  poetry  fell  into  professional  hands, 
the  English  minstrel,  whose  line  of  inheritance  is  direct 
from  the  gleeman,  rose  somewhat  in  dignity,  though  he 
must  have  descended  in  more  senses  than  one  from  his 
other  ancestor,  the  knightly  troubadour  and  trouvere.  The 
mediaeval  minstrel,  whatever  his  occasional  success  and 
repute,  was  often  little  more  than  a  privileged  vagabond, 
licensed  to  wander  where  he  would,  picking  up  a  liveli- 
hood by  his  talents  as  a  singer,  actor,  and  general  enter- 
tainer. Although  disdained  as  an  inferior,  alike  by  the 
cleric  and  the  man  at  arms,  the  minstrel  was  ever  welcome 
in  times  of  festival  whether  at  court,  in  the  castles  of  the 
nobility,  at  gatherings  in  the  market  town,  or  even  at 
the  hospitable  tables  of  the  religious  houses.  Indeed,  we 
read  of  fortunes  squandered  by  nobles  on  minstrels  and 
of  gifts  to  them  of  money  and  even  of  lands. ^  We  do  not 
know  to  what  extent  the  minstrel  was  responsible  for  the 
remnants  of  the  mediaeval  lyric  that  have  come  down  to  us. 
That  he  was  responsible  for  much  seems  hardly  question- 
able, for  it  was  to  his  interest  as  an  entertainer  to  keep  a 
record  of  his  craft.  Without  further  reference  to  this 
matter  of  origins  let  us  look  at  some  of  the  varieties  of 
these  lyrics. 

*  On  this  whole   topic  see  the  admirable   chapters  of   Chambers, 
The  Medtceval  Stage.  London,  1903,  i,  pp.  11-86. 


THE  MEDLEVAL  LYRIC  19 

The  distinguishing  elements  of  the  folk-song  have  been 
briefly  stated:  "as  to  substance,  repetition,  interjection, 
and  refrain;  and,  as  to  form,  a  verse  accommodated  to  a 
dance,  question  and  answer,  and  rustic  interchange  of 
satire."  ^  The  same  authority  adds  that  although  these 
features  are  not  to  be  found  combined  in  any  one  speci- 
men of  the  mediaeval  lyric,  all  are  exemplified  in  the  col- 
lections extant.  The  refrain  is  often  meaningless,  as 

Po,  po,  po,  po. 

Love  bran  and  so  do  mo; 

or  distorted,  as  "Kyrieleyson"  applied  to  verses  far  from 
religious  or  even  respectable.  It  is  often  in  French  or 
Latin,  as  Veni  coronahcris,  in  the  case  of  a  catch  in  praise 
of  the  ivy,  referable  back  to  heathen  worship  of  that  plant 
in  strife  with  the  holly  as  emblems  of  the  fructifying 
principles.  Most  usually  the  refrain  bears,  however,  a  close 
relation  to  the  subject  in  hand,  as  where  each  stanza  of  a 
carol  ends  with  "Wolcum,  Yole!"  each  stanza  of  a  bac- 
chanal with  "But  bring  us  in  good  ale!"  or  of  a  satirical 
song  in  mockery  of  the  sad  estate  of  the  lover : 

Such  tormenles  to  me  I  take. 
That  when  I  slope  I  may  not  wake. 

But  these  have,  of  course,  nothing  actually  in  common 
with  the  folk.  In  the  following,  however  conscious  this 
particular  version,  the  improvisation  of  the  initial  phrase 
by  the  individual  singer,  the  chorus  and  the  very  sway  of 
the  throng  to  and  fro,  an^  all  well  preserved: 

•  F.  M.  Padclford,  in  The  Cambridge  flinlory  nf  p'nglisk  Literature, 
CamhridKf.  lOOK.  ii.  Hi. 


20  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

I  have  twelfe  oxen  that  be  faire  and  brown. 
And  they  go  a  grasing  down  by  the  town. 

With  hey!  with  how!  with  hey! 
Saweste  not  you  mine  oxen,  you  litill  prety  boy? 

I  have  twelfe  oxen  and  they  be  faire  and  white. 
And  they  go  a  grasing  down  by  the  dyke. 

With  hey!  with  how!  with  hey! 
Saweste  not  you  mine  oxen,  you  litill  prety  boy? 

Another  form  of  verse,  more  or  less  ultimately  referable 
to  folk-song,  is  the  verse  amoebaean  or  question  and  reply. 
A  romantic  fragment  of  this  begins: 

Maiden  in  the  mor  lay,  in  the  mor  lay  sevenight  full. 
Well  was  hire  mete,  wat  was  hir  mete  ? 
The  primerole  ant  the  violet. 

The  dialogue  form  was  developed  in  later  amorous  verse 
to  a  degree  of  elaboration  in  poems  such  as  "The  Nut- 
brown  Maid"  or  in  Henryson's  "Robene  and  Makyne," 
but  this  last  at  least  has  a  very  different  origin. 

In  the  carol,  which  was  brought  over  from  France  at 
least  as  early  as  the  twelfth  century,  the  minstrel  tres- 
passed on  the  province  of  the  religious  poet,  while  touch- 
ing at  the  same  time  the  popular  festivities  handed  down 
with  the  modifications  of  compromise  from  pre-Christian 
times.  It  is  no  wonder,  then,  that  the  carols  range  from 
narratives  of  the  Nativity  and  other  related  events  of  the 
life  of  Christ  to  naive  expressions  of  the  joy,  the  feast- 
ing, and  the  good  fellowship  of  Yule-tide  and  the  customs 
that  accompanied  this  most  important  festivity  of  the 
year.  Several  delightful  songs  declare  the  traditional 
strife  between  the  holly  and  the  ivy: 


THE  IklEDLEVAL  LYRIC  21 

Holly  bereth  beris, 

Beris  rede  enough; 
The  thristilcok,  the  popingay 

Daunce  in  every  bough. 
Wei  away,  sory  Ivy! 

What  fowles  hast  thou. 
But  the  sory  howlet 

That  singeth  "how  how." 

Others  relate  to  the  ancient  rite  of  bringing  in  the  boar's 
head  in  procession  and  with  song: 

The  boris  hede  in  hondes  I  bringe. 

With  garlondes  gay  and  birdes  singinge, 

I  pray  you  all,  helpe  me  to  singe 
Qui  estis  in  convivio; 

while  still  others  offer  little  more  than  jovial  words  of 
welcome : 

Lett  no  man  cum  into  this  hall, 

Grome,  page,  nor  yet  marshall. 
But  that  sum  sport  he  bring  us  all: 
For  now  is  the  time  of  Cbristcmaal 

Closely  related  to  the  more  serious  carols  of  the  Christ- 
mas season  are  the  spiritual  lullabies  in  which  the  Child 
is  represented  in  his  mother's  arms  or  lulled  to  sleep  in 
his  cradle  by  her  song.  At  times  a  dialogue  ensues  between 
the  two,  the  ('iiild  forolclling  tlie  sufferings  that  arc  to  be 
his  or  uttering  i)r()plietic  promises  of  the  glorj^  that  is  to 
come.  A  variety  of  this  type  is  the  comi)laint  of  Mary, 
which  takes  many  forms,  such  as  that  of  an  address  to 
Je.sus,  or  to  the  cro.ss,  a  dialogue  between  Mary  and  Jesus 
or  Mary  and  the  cross,  or  even  a  trialogue  in  which  John 


22  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

also  figures.^  These  last  are  closely  akin  to  the  famous 
medieval  Latin  hymn,  "  Stabat  Mater  dolorosa."  As  to 
the  lullabies  at  large,  many  of  them  are  distinguished  by 
a  genuine  depth  and  tenderness  of  feeling  and  by  invent- 
ive fertility  in  similitude  and  poetic  adornment.  Their 
variety  of  metre,  too,  derived  with  equal  facility  from  the 
Teutonic  four  stress  alliterative  verse,  from  the  septenarius 
of  the  Latin  hymns  or  the  more  varied  stanzas  of  French 
secular  song,  is  here,  as  elsewhere  in  the  mediaeval  lyric, 
endless.  Characteristically  mediaeval  is  the  type  which 
converts  the  thought  into  allegory: 

Lully,  lulley,  lully,  luUey; 

The  fawcon  hath  born  my  make  away. 

He  bare  hyra  up,  he  bare  hym  down. 
He  bare  hym  in  to  an  orchard  browne. 

In  that  orchard  there  was  an  halle 
That  was  hangid  with  purpill  and  pall. 

And  in  that  hall  there  was  a  bede. 
Hit  was  hangid  with  gold  so  rede. 

And  yn  that  bede  there  lythe  a  knyght. 
His  woundis  bledying  day  and  nyght. 

By  that  bede  side  kneleth  a  may. 
And  she  wepeth  both  nyght  and  day. 

And  by  that  bedde  side  there  stondith  a  ston, 
Corpus  Christi  wretyn  ther  on. 

The  recurrence  of  the  refrain  after  each  couplet,  the  repe- 

titionary  quality  of  the  cumulative  statements,  the  Teu- 

*  Cambridge  History  of  English  Literature,  ii,  p.  434. 


THE  MEDLEVAL  LYEIC  23 

tonic  simplicity  of  the  verse,  the  allegory  and  its  directness, 

unite  in  this  little  poem  to  produce  an  effect  not  easily 

equaled  by  our  late  poets  who  have  attempted  the  revival 

of  things  mediseval.  Longer  and  less  well  sustained  is  the 

allegory  of  another  poem  wherein  the  poet  fancies  himself 

a  careless  youth  treading  his  way  "of  a  somers  day,"  his 

hawk  on  fist,  his  spaniel  by  his  side,  the  game  in  sight, 

when  a  rough  brier  pricks  him  as  he  passes  and  bids  him 

"reveriere."   Such  poems  connect  the  groups  of  religious 

poems  with  those  that  dilate  on  the  vanity  of  life,  and 

hark  back  ultimately  to  the  Psalms  and  Ecclesiastes  and 

to  the  many  patristic  writings  that  dwell  on  the  favorite 

mediaeval  theme,  de  contemptu  mundi.    And  here,  too, 

belongs  that  grim  conception  of  life  as  a  dance  of  death, 

popular  subject  for  brush  and  chisel  as  for  drama  and  the 

lyric. 

Erthe  appon  erthe  wolde  be  a  kinge; 
Bot  howc  erthc  to  erthe  sail,  thinkes  he  no  thinge. 
When  erthe  bredcs  erthe,  and  his  rentes  home  bringe. 
Thane  schalle  erthe  of  erthe  hafe  full  harde  partinge.^ 

These  are  tones  such  as  those  of  the  deepest  pipes  of  the 
organ  when  sound  ceases  to  be  wholly  audible  and  stirs  us 
only  as  a  mysterious  and  disquieting  tremor.  Less  mov- 
ing are  the  poems  the  intent  of  wliicli  is  only  monitory: 
trust  not  friendshiij  untried,  be  careful  not  to  talk  o'er 
much,  keep  money  in  thy  purse,  beware  of  losing  the 
freedom  of  bachelorhood;  and  these  in  turn  shade  off 
into  satirical  verses  directed  against  women,  their  wiles, 
'  Early  English  Lyrics,  p.  171. 


24  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

their  shrewishness,  their  idle  gossip,  and  ale-bibbing. 
^Yith  them  and  with  the  reiterated  truisms  of  moral  and 
gnomic  verses  we  speedily  pass  out  of  the  realm  of  song 
into  the  close  confines  of  didacticism,  where  "no  birds 
sing." 

The  love  songs  of  the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth  centuries 
defy  in  their  variety  any  attempt  at  classification.  The 
influences  that  went  to  their  making  were  much  those 
governing  other  lyrical  poetry,  save  that  here  direct 
influences  from  France  are  more  certainly  traceable. 
Among  the  several  French  types  translated  and  imitated 
most  frequently  are  the  address,  the  debat,  the  pastourelle, 
and  the  ballade,  the  last  ordinarily  losing  its  form.  The 
address  often  takes  the  shape  of  a  New  Year's  letter  from 
the  poet  to  his  lady,  couched  in  stately  terms  declaring 
undying  allegiance  and  service.  The  debat  is  restricted  in 
English  to  a  dialogue  between  a  heartless  lady  and  her 
devoted  "servant."  It  is  sometimes  prolonged  to  great 
length  and  maintained  with  more  ingenuity  than  lyricism, 
as  in  the  well-known  example  of  La  Belle  Dame  Sans 
Mercy.  The  pastourelle,  a  common  form  of  the  chanson 
d'aventure,  is  either  a  love  song,  in  dialogue  between  two 
rustics,  or  the  love-making  of  a  gallant  and  a  country 
maiden.  Of  this  last  two  interesting  English  specimens 
are  extant.  One  of  them  has  cast  off  wholly  the  foreign 
spirit  and,  though  only  a  late  version  exists  (one  sung  by 
Henry  VIII  and  his  courtiers),  from  its  recurrent  refrain 
and  other  features  the  poem  is  doubtless  of  far  earlier 
origin.  The  first  stanza  runs: 


THE  MEDLEVAL  LYRIC  25 

Hey,  troly  loly  lo,  maid,  whither  go  you  ? 
I  go  to  the  meadow  to  milk  my  cow. 
Then  at  the  meadow  I  will  you  meet. 
To  gather  the  flowers  both  faire  and  sweet. 
Nay,  God  forbid,  that  may  not  be! 
I  wis  my  mother  then  shall  us  see.^ 

It  was  the  snatch  of  an  old  pastourelle,  otherwise  known, 
that  Feste  sang  in  Twelfth  Night  : 

A  Robyn,  jolly  Robyn, 

Tell  me  how  they  leman  doeth 

And  thou  shalt  knowe  of  myn; 

and  it  was  the  pastourelle  that  Henryson  glorified  into  that 

most  charming  of  his  shorter  poems  "  Robene  and  Makyne" 

which  enforces  the  naive  but  wholesome  lesson  that 

The  man  that  will  nocht  quhen  he  may 
Sail  half  nocht  quhen  he  wald. 

"Of  all  forms  of  amatory  poetry,"  says  Padelford,  "the 
ballade  enjoyed  the  greatest  popularity  in  England.  .  .  . 
Every  phase  of  the  conventional  love-complaint,  every 
chapter  in  the  cycle  of  the  lover's  history  is  treated  in 
these  ballades  precisely  as  in  the  corresponding  verse  in 
France."  ^  Without  further  specifying  these  influences  in 
forms  such  as  the  aube  or  complaint  of  a  lover  at  the 
api)roach  of  morning,  the  chanson  a  pcrsonnages  or  song 
of  the  rites  of  si)ring,  or  the  effect  of  lightsome  measures 
such  as  those  of  the  lai  and  the  descort,  we  may  turn  to  the 

•  Il<'prinlc<l  in  Anglia,  xii,  p.  255,  in  an  older  form. 

*  Camhrvlgc  Engliah  Lilcr(Uure,  p.  442.  This  pa.ssagc  must  be  inter- 
prcted  as  api)Iying  to  the  content,  not  the  difT](  nil  techtiical  form,  of  the 
balladr,  which,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  was  little  j)racli,scd  in  nicdio-'vul  Eng- 
land save  by  Chaucer  and  his  followers. 


2G  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

larger  characteristics  of  this  rich  literature  of  late  medi- 
aeval amorous  song.  Here  we  find  the  joy  of  life  and  a 
feeling  for  the  beauty  of  the  world,  flowers,  birds,  and 
sunshine,  all,  in  a  sense,  the  conventional  furniture  of  the 
poet  and  yet  not  wholly  lacking  in  that  quality  of  par- 
ticularity which  critics  are  accustomed  to  associate  only 
with  later  times.  In  a  famous  song  the  poet  bursts  forth: 

Bytuene  Mersh  ant  Averil, 

When  spray  biginneth  to  springe. 
The  Intel  foul  hath  hire  wyl 
On  hyre  lud  to  synge. 
Ich  libbe  in  love-longinge 
For  semlokest  of  alle  thinge; 
He  may  me  blisse  bringe; 
Icham  in  hire  bandoun. 

And  hendy  hap  ichabbe  yhent; 
Ichot  from  hevene  it  is  me  sent; 
From  alle  wymmen  mi  love  is  lent 
Ant  lyht  on  Alysoun.^ 

Attention  has  been  called  to  little  personal  touches  among 
these  lyrics.  Of  Alysoun  we  learn  that  "hire  browe"  was 
"broune,  hire  eye  blake."  "One  wommon  woneth  by 
west";  a  second  is  described  as  "that  swete  thing,  with 
eyen  gray,"  and  of  still  another,  a  maid  of  Ribbesdale, 
we  are  told,  in  what  amounts  to  "the  precision  of  a  min- 
iature," that  "hire  chyn  is  cloven"  and  she 

Hath  a  mury  mouht  to  mele. 
With  lefly  rede  lippes  lele, 
Romaunz  for  to  rede. 

*  Printed  in  Bbddeker,  p.  147.  Lutel  foul,  little  bird;  lud,  voice; 
libbe,  live;  semlokest,  seemliest;  he,  she;  Icham,  I  am;  bandoun,  lordship; 
hendy,  fair,  lucky;  yhent,  gained;  Ichot,  I  wot ;  lent,  turned. 


THE  MEDLEVAL  LYRIC  27 

Unquestionably  the  English  minstrel  worked  himself 
freer  of  "the  metaphysics  of  love"  than  his  Gallic  elder 
brother;  he  avows  frankly  the  nature  of  his  passion,  de- 
claring how,  as 

In  a  wjTidon,  ther  we  stod, 

We  custe  use  fyfty  sythe,  ^ 

and  the  lady  in  turn  as  frankly  confesses. 

That  I  nam  thyn,  and  thou  art  myn. 
To  don  al  thi  wille. 

To  the  Latin  of  the  cloister  touching  the  French  of  the 
court,  with  all  the  cross-currents  of  their  intermingling 
with  the  vernacular,  must  be  ascribed  the  macaronic  na- 
ture of  so  many  of  these  poems  both  sacred  and  secular. 
To  these  influences,  too,  must  be  referred  both  the  per- 
version of  hymns  and  the  parodying  of  sacred  songs  by 
the  wandering  scholars  as  well  as  the  retaliatory  adapta- 
tion of  amorous  ministrelsy  to  sacred  uses.  The  Francis- 
cans especially  were  active  in  this  last,  enjoined  as  they 
had  been  by  their  founder,  St.  Francis,  a  trouvere  in  his 
youth,  to  become  joculatores  Domini.  It  has  been  noted 
that  "the  only  two  names  to  which  religious  lyrics  attach 
themselves  in  the  thirteenth  century  are  both  those  of 
other  minorites."  There  arc  not  lacking  other  later 
examples. 

The  martial  spirit,  however  it  permeated  the  ago  and 
although  it  produced  much  verse  which  belongs  to  the 
occasional  class,  has  given  us  only  one  name  with  which 
indulgent  criticism  can   link  the   title,  lyrist.   Of   Law- 

'  How  a,  .1  window,  a.s  we  8too<l,  we  kissed  each  other  fifty  timca. 


28  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

rence  Minot  we  know  literally  nothing  save  his  name, 
which  he  attached  in  two  places  to  a  manuscript  con- 
taining eleven  poems  in  lyrical  form  dealing  with  the 
deeds  of  Edward  III  against  the  French  and  the  Scots 
between  1333  and  1352.  Minot  is  a  skilful  versifier,  after 
the  intricate  mediaeval  scholarly  manner,  and  his  lines  are 
direct,  vigorous,  and  imbued  with  the  species  of  patriot- 
ism that  lauds  the  victor  and  gibes  the  foe.  I  cannot 
feel  that  "  the  poetical  value  of  these  songs  has  been 
somewhat  unduly  depreciated."  ^ 

The  polite  poets  of  the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth  cen- 
turies were  surprisingly  unly rical ;  even  Chaucer,  of  whom 
the  modern  spirit  is  so  consistently  affirmed,  with  all  his 
marvellous  range  of  epic  and  dramatic  art,  is  reflective 
and  elegiac,  ever  musical,  yet  rarely  quite  lyrical.  The 
Book  of  the  Duchess,  The  Prioress^  Tale,  and  the  lawyer's 
Tale  of  Constance,  all,  however,  in  parts  disclose  Chaucer 
lyrically,  when  he  dips  for  the  nonce  below  the  rippling 
surface  of  his  incomparable  narrative  art.  "Truth," 
"Gentilesse,"  and  "The  Former  Age"  are  pieces  admir- 
ably reflective,  and  Chaucer's  vers  de  societe  —  "To  Rosa- 
mund," for  example  —  rings  charming  variations  on  its 
conventional  and  artificial  themes.  But  when  all  has 
been  said,  there  are  few  authentic  lyrics  in  Chaucer.  Per- 
haps best  among  them,  though  also  on  a  theme  well-worn, 
is  the  burst  into  song  of  the  birds  at  the  close  of  The 
Parlement  of  Foules : 

1  See  Hall,  J.,  The  Poems  oj  Lawrence  Minot,  Oxford,  1889,  and 
C.  L.  Thomson  in  Cambridge  English  Literature,  i,  p.  398. 


THE  MEDLEVAL   LYRIC  99 

Now  welcom  somer,  with  thy  sonne  softe. 
That  hast  this  wintres  weders  over-shake. 
And  driven  awey  the  longe  nightes  blake! 

Seynt  ValentjTi,  that  art  ful  hy  on-lofte;  — 
Thus  singen  smale  foules  for  thy  sake  — 

Now  welcom  somer,  with  thy  sonne  softe. 
That  hast  this  wintres  weders  over-shake. 

Wei  han  they  cause  for  to  gladen  ofte, 
Sith  ech  of  hem  recovered  hath  his  make; 
Ful  blisful  may  they  singen  whan  they  wake: 
Now  welcom  somer,  with  thy  sonne  softe, 
That  hast  this  wintres  weders  over-shake. 
And  driven  awey  the  longe  nightes  blake. 

This  little  poem  is  in  form  a  rondel,  a  development  among 
the  French  poets  of  the  thirteenth  and  fourteenth  cen- 
turies of  the  popular  dance-song  (rondet  or  rondet  de  carnle) 
and  consisting  of  two  elements,  the  text  which  varies  and 
is  sung  by  the  leader,  and  the  refrain,  repeated  in  unvary- 
ing words,  by  the  other  singers.  The  rondel  developed 
into  several  varieties  from  the  eight-line  form,  commonly 
called  a  triolet,  to  those  of  thirteen  or  fourteen  lines.  The 
ordering  of  the  refrain  complete,  one  line  of  the  text,  one 
line  of  the  refrain,  two  or  more  of  the  text,  closing  with 
the  complete  refrain  as  here,  is  the  usual  arrangement. 
Chauc-er  was  fond  of  Ihcso  difrirult  exotic  French  forms, the 
ballade  in  particular,  which  ordering  three  rimes  in  eight 
lines  interwoven  (a  b  a  b  b  b  c),  repeats  the  stanza  thrice 
on  the  three  rimes  and  concludes  with  an  envoy,  or  ai)j)li- 
cation,  still  playing  on  the  earlier  three  rimes.  Chaucer 
wrote  under  influences  emanating  from  France  practi- 


30  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

cally  throughout  his  career;  they  were  overwhelmingly 
predominant  in  his  earliest  work,  not  only  in  metrical 
forms  and  titles  such  as  the  Compleynt  (a  love  poem  of 
mournful  intent  usually  addressed  to  a  pitiless  lady),  but 
in  the  plan  and  spirit  of  his  work.  And  all  these  things 
continued  in  the  poets  that  followed  Chaucer  and  vowed 
fealty  to  him.  But  if  Chaucer,  with  all  his  grace,  melody, 
and  powers  of  observation,  is  not  essentially  lyrical,  no 
more  lyrical  is  any  one  of  his  immediate  disciples  and 
successors.  The  trilingual  moral  Gower,  feebly  sprawl- 
ing Occleve,  Lydgate,  biographical  if  not  subjective  in 
his  satirical  flash,  "London  Lyckpenny"  (if  the  critics 
will  allow  it  to  be  his),  the  author  of  Wallace,  King  James 
with  his  Kingis  Quair,  prolonging  a  plaint  of  love  to  1400 
lines  —  none  of  these  is  lyrical.  It  is  not,  indeed,  until  we 
reach  Henryson,  Dunbar,  and  Skelton  that  the  lyrical 
note  breaks  forth  among  these  learned  poets;  in  them, 
with  all  their  morality,  satire,  and  allegory,  the  lyric  is 
like  a  sparse  and  belated  blossom  of  the  gorse,  otherwise 
of  foliage  harsh,  dark,  and  thorny.  To  Henryson,  as  \\%\ 
have  seen,  we  owe  the  earliest  English  pastoral  poem,/ 
"Robene  and  Makyne,"  an  amoebsean  lyric  of  delightful 
naivete.  With  Skelton  and  Dunbar,  who  was  the  first 
British  poet  to  see  his  works  in  print,  we  reach  a  new 
age,  and  with  these  names  to  carry  over  we  may  fittingly 
conclude  this  chapter. 


CHAPTER  III 

LYRICAL   POETRY   IN   THE   ENGLAND   OF   THE   TUDORS 

T  the  opening  of  the  sixteenth  century  the 
greatest  author  writing  in  an  English  tongue 
was  the  Scottish  poet,  William  Dunbar.  Dun- 
bar's education  was  complete  about  1480;  he 
had  meditated  taking  orders,  but  instead  travelled  abroad, 
as  the  scholars  of  the  day  were  wont  to  do,  visiting  France 
and  England.  Some  years  before  the  opening  of  the  new 
century  Dunbar  had  become  the  king's  poet,  and  his  life 
from  then  on  is  associated  with  tiic  court  of  James  IV  of 
Scotland,  who  appears  to  have  supported  him  with  a  sub- 
stantial pension  towards  the  end  of  his  life.  There  is  a 
tradition  that  Dunbar  fell  with  his  master  at  Flodden 
Field;  at  least  we  hear  no  more  of  the  poet  after  1513. 
Dunbar  is  the  greatest  of  the  Chauccrians.  As  such  he 
belongs  to  the  older  age,  and  modernity  is  not  to  be  ex- 
prctcd  of  him.  Indeed  the  May-morning,  the  dream,  the 
allegory  of  bird  and  beast,  grotcsqueness  of  imagerj%  even 
the  moralizing  i)lutittido  —  all  the  hackneyed  conven- 
tions of  the  old  poetry  —  are  Dunbar's.  His  observa- 
tion of  nature  —  which  has  sometimes  been  praised  — 
betrays  him  (though  pcrhay)s  here  he  only  followed  his 
models  in  Middle-English)  into  such  generalizations  as 
this: 


Si  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

A  nychtingaill  with  suggurit  notis  new 
Quhois  angell  fedderis  as  the  peacock  schone: 

obviously  a  bird  that  sings  sweetly  must  likewise  be  gor- 
geously plumaged.  And  yet  Dunbar  is  likewise  a  powerful 
and  delightful  poet  in  his  own  right,  and  one  who,  but  for 
the  difficulties  of  his  voluble  Scottish  tongue,  must  long 
since  have  come  more  fully  into  his  own.  Music  there  is, 
and  movement,  in  all  Dunbar's  poetry ,  and  it  has  been 
confidently  affirmed  that  he  was  the  first  British  poet 
to  create  classical  lyrics  of  an  artistic  kind.^ 

In  Scotland  Dunbar  had  but  one  rival,  Gawain  Douglas, 
translator  of  the  Mneid,  a  learned  humanist  to  whom 
poetry  was  one  of  the  diversions  of  rhetoric.  Stephen 
Hawes,  too,  in  England  similarly  practised  poetry  as  a 
commendable  moral  occupation,  setting  up  his  poetical 
trinity,  Chaucer,  Gower,  and  Lydgate,  too  pious  to  dis- 
tinguish their  attributes,  or  perhaps  too  dull  to  discern 
them.  An  abler  man  and  more  abreast  with  his  age  was 
Alexander  Barclay,  translator  of  Brandt's  Shijp  of  Fools 
and  author  of  the  earliest  eclogues  in  the  English  tongue; 
and  abler  still  was  John  Hey  wood,  the  epigrammatist,  and 
writer  of  clever  and  witty  interludes.  But  no  one  of  these 
worthy  writers  could  have  been  betrayed  into  an  indiscre- 
tion such  as  a  lyric.  Such  was  not  true  of  their  greater 
contemporary,  John  Skelton.  Skelton  was  Henry  VIII's 
poet  much  as  Dunbar  had  been  the  poet  of  James  IV. 

^  Brandl,  in  Ten  Brink's  Geschichte  der  englischen  Litterature,  Berlin, 
1893,  II,  431.  Cf.  also  F.  B.  Gummere,  Old  English  Ballads.  1894,  In- 
troduction, p.  xiii. 


m  THE  ENGLAND  OF  THE  TUDORS    33 

The  English  poet's  social  standing  was  less  than  Dun- 
bar's, but,  crowned  poeta  laureaius  for  his  Latin  verses 
at  Oxford,  his  professional  honors  were  greater  as  well  as 
the  emoluments  that  they  carried.  Skelton  was  one  of  the 
royal  tutors,  a  lover  of  the  new  learning,  a  man  of  the 
type  of  Erasmus  and  More;  but  he  was  also  a  satirist, 
though  his  bitter  flagellation  of  abuse,  especially  in  the 
person  of  his  arch-enemy  Cardinal  Wolsey,  places  him 
fathoms  lengths  above  such  a  royal  jester  as  Heywood. 
The  wider  reaches  of  the  Skeltonian  literature  do  not  con- 
cern us  here.  Skelton  was  alike  satirist,  epigrammatist, 
and  dramatist,  and  as  such  after  his  kind  he  is  grotesque, 
allegorical,  and  didactic.  But  Skelton  is  likewise  a  poet, 
disclosing  at  times  a  lyrical  note  and  power  of  music,  the 
more  remarkable  that  he  produced  his  effects  with  the 
old  tumbling  metres,  and  appears  to  have  been  little 
affected  cither  by  reminiscences  of  earlier  English  min- 
strelsy or  by  the  new  Petrarchism  so  soon  to  dominate 
English  amorous  verse.  The  most  musical  of  his  lyrics 
bubbles  with  an  ecstatic  refrain: 

Merry  Margaret 

As  midsommer  flower, 
Geritlo  iiH  falcon 

Or  hawk  of  the  tower. 

More  of  the  universal  stuff  of  the  lover's  complaint  are 
the  following  lines,  which,  however,  arc  distinguishable 
in  more  than  their  anliquatcd  language  from  the  new 
lyric  shortly  to  spring  up  in  the  court  of  Skclton's 
master: 


34  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

Go,  pytyous  hart,  rasyd  with  dedly  wo 

Persyd  with  pain,  bleding  with  wondes  smart, 

Bewayle  thy  fortune,  with  vajTiys  wan  and  bio. 

O  Fortune  unfrendly.  Fortune  unkynde  thou 

To  be  so  cruel  and  so  ovarthwart 

To  suffer  me  so  carefull  to  endure 

That  who  I  love  best  I  dare  not  dyscure! 

Before  we  proceed  to  the  rise  of  the  new  court  lyric  in 
Wyatt  and  Surrey,  let  us  turn  to  the  lyrical  poetry  — 
I  \Tne  descendant  of  the  poetry  of  the  minstrel  —  that  con- 
I  tinned  to  be  set  to  music  and  sung  in  the  musical  court  of 
King  Henry  VIII.  A  considerable  corpus  of  material  has 
been  preserved,  made  up  of  manuscript  poems  dating  from 
the  youth  of  the  king,  some  of  them  by  the  royal  hand, 
others  by  poets  and  musicians  of  his  court;  still  other  ex- 
amples are  furnished  by  parts  of  song  books  and  collec- 
tions of  carols.^  Indubitably  much  of  this  belongs  to  a 
far  earlier  time;  but  some  of  it  is  referable  to  the  years 
immediately  following  King  Henry's  accession  to  his 
throne.  As  is  well  known  though  occasionally  forgotten, 
Henry  in  his  youth  was  a  very  accomplished  prince,  who 
added  to  prowess  in  athletic  games  of  skill,  a  theological 
acumen  that  attempted  the  confutation  of  Luther  in 
print.  Among  King  Henry's  minor  graces  was  an  ability 
to  compose  verses  and  set  them  to  music;  and  several 
specimens  of  his  skill  in  the  wedded  arts  remain  extant. 
Evidently  the  sociable  monarch  spoke  out  of  his  heart 
when  he  wrote: 

^  See  especially  for  this  the  collection  of  E.  Fliigel,  in  Anglia,  xii,  pp. 
230  ff. 


m   THE  ENGLAND  OF  THE  TUDORS    35 

Pastime  with  good  company 
I  love  and  shall  until  I  die; 

but  it  must  come  as  a  surprise  to  some  that  the  EngUsh 
Bluebeard  should  ever  have  sung: 

As  the  holly  groweth  green. 

And  never  changeth  hue. 
So  I  am,  ever  hath  been 

Unto  my  lady  true. 

Some  other  names  appear  among  these  early  court  lyrists, 
such  as  William  Cornysshe  and  Thomas  Fardyng,  both 
musicians  of  the  Chapel  Royal,  an  interesting  testimony 
to  the  close  union  of  music  and  poetry  in  these  early 
times.  That  the  composers  were  likewise  the  authors  of 
the  verses  which  they  set  to  music  we  cannot  of  course  be 
certain.  That  the  poet  and  musician  did  often  so  com- 
bine, as  frequently  later,  can  scarcely  be  denied.  In  these 
collections  there  is  no  inconsiderable  variety  of  subject- 
matter  and  treatment.  By  no  means  are  all  of  these 
poems  erotic;  besides  those  celebrating  good  fellowship, 
there  are  hunting  songs,  gnomic  verses,  a  few  devotional 
poems,  especially  specimens  of  the  lullaby,  and  even 
lines  breathing  the  patriotic  spirit.  There  are  no  more 
spirited  verses  in  the  collection  than  the  following  which 
appear  anonymously  and  may  l)e  referred  to  a  time  just 
prior  to  the  Battle  of  the  Spurs,  1513: 

Engiond  ho  glad,  i)Iuk  up  thy  lusty  hart. 
Help  now  Ihi  king,  tlii  king,  and  take  his  part. 

Agcynst  the  frenclmien  in  the  fcld  to  fyght, 
In  the  quarell  of  the  church  and  in  the  ryght. 


36  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

With  spers  and  sheldys  on  gudly  horsys  lyght, 
Bowys  and  arows  to  put  them  all  to  flyght. 

Intrinsically  this  poetry  marks  little  if  any  advance  be- 
yond the  earlier  mediteval  collections  of  like  character. 
All  is  simple  and  natural  in  manner,  free  from  the  slight- 
est attempt  at  descriptive  effect,  save  for  the  decorative 
"  flowers  sweete,"  the  over-worked  nightingale,  and  the 
inevitable  May  morning.  And  there  is  as  little  of  the 
classics  as  there  is  of  the  hyperbole  of  emotion.  As  to 
the  versification,  there  is  all  but  an  absolute  adherence  to 
the  older  metrical  system,  that  is:  the  system  ultimately 
referable  to  Early  English  times  and  dependent  less  on 
distribution  of  light  and  accented  syllables,  than  on  regu- 
lar recurrence  of  the  accents  (usually  four,  or  reduce- 
able  to  four)  —  or  to  that  system  as  modified  by  the  Latin 
septenary  and  its  derivatives,  the  English  ballad  metres. 
Repeated  rimes,  internal  rimes,  repetitions  of  phrase  and 
refrain  added  to  all  this,  conspire  to  produce  a  contrast 
alike  with  the  learned  poets  of  the  age  and  those  that 
came  after,  and  to  justify  Marlowe's  phrase  in  designa- 
tion of  this  kind  of  verse  as  "the  jigging  vein  of  riming 
mother  wits."  Indeed,  with  popular  poetry  such  as  this 
and  Chaucerians  more  mediaeval  than  was  ever  Chaucer 
a  hundred  and  twenty  years  before,  there  was  little  pro- 
mise in  the  early  days  of  Henry  VIII  of  the  blossoming 
of  lyrical  poetry. 

English  lyrical  poetry  first  felt  the  flush  and  the  quick- 
ening of  the  Renaissance  when  Henry  had  been  on  his 
throne  a  score  of  years.  As  the  excellent  Elizabethan 


IN  THE  ENGLAND  OF  THE  TUDORS    37 

critic,  Puttenham,  quaintlj^  puts  it:  "In  the  latter  end 
of  the  same  king's  raigne  sprong  up  a  new  company  of 
courtly  makers,  of  whom  Sir  Thomas  Wyatt  the  elder  and 
Henry  Earle  of  Surrey  were  the  two  chieftaines,  who  hav- 
ing travailed  into  Italic,  and  there  tasted  the  sweete  and: 
stately  measures  and  stile  of  the  Italian  poesie,  as  nov-1 
ices  newly  crept  out  of  the  schools  of  Dante,  Ariosto, 
and  Petrarch,  they  greatly  polished  our  rude  and  homely 
manner  of  vulgar  poesie,  from  that  it  had  been  before,  and 
for  that  cause  may  justly  be  said  the  first  reformers  of 
our  English  metre  and  stile."  As  a  matter  of  fact,  Surrey 
never  "travailed  into  Italic,"  though  Wyatt  certainly  j 
did.   Wyatt  was  the  elder  and  the  abler,  and  to  him  is  due 
the  new  direction  of  English  poetry;  yet  Surrey  was  an  | 
intelligent  disciple.    To  Wyatt  we  owe  the  introduction  ", 
of  the  Italian  sonnet  into  English  literature;  to  Surrey  j 
the  modification  of  this  exotic  form  to  accord  with  Eng- 
lish metrical  traditions. 

The  lyric  of  love,  as  we  have  seen,  found  its  earliest 
modem  literary  expression  in  Provengal  poetry.  This 
poetry  in  turn  insi)ired,  as  is  well  known,  the  Italian  lyr- 
ists of  the  thirteenth  century,  who  sang  with  a  sweetness, 
a  purity,  and  literary  finish  which  few  succeeding  ages 
have  approached.  The  troubadour  sought  to  idealize  his' 
passion,  but  it  remained  in  his  hands  none  the  less  a  sen- 
suous and  joyous  tiling  of  earth.  His  Ilulian  disciples  were 
the  first  to  achieve  that  .apotheosis  of  love,  whereby  hu- 
man i)assion  bec-onies  the  syni})ol  of  a  sj)irilual  adora- 
tion of  purity  and  holiness,  and  reverence  supplants  the 


88  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

lover's  longing  to  possess  the  idol  of  his  affections.*  An- 
other characteristic  of  this  poetry  was  its  scholasticism 
leading  to  subtlety  of  thought  and  illustration,  to  alle- 
gory and  to  personification,  though  these  latter  are  com- 
mon to  other  forms  of  mediaeval  literature.  All  these 
things  are  sometimes  denominated  Platonism;  and  if  we 
recognize  that  this  is  not  the  Platonism  of  the  Greeks, 
however  derivative  in  certain  qualities,  we  have  enough 
for  our  present  purpose.  It  was  in  the  beautiful  and  sub- 
limely spiritual  poetry  of  the  Vita  Nuova  of  Dante  that 
this  cult  of  idealized  love  found  its  ultimate  expression. 
When  we  turn  to  Petrarch  we  find  that  the  ideals  of  the 
Renaissance  had  superseded  those  of  medisevalism;  but 
it  is  not  as  if  these  finer  ideals  had  never  existed.  Petrarch, 
like  Dante,  celebrated  in  his  sonnets  an  ideal  passion; 
but  while  Dante,  in  the  white  heat  of  a  passionate  devo- 
tion to  his  Beatrice,  reaches  the  ecstasy  of  the  saint,  in- 
tensity of  passion  in  Petrarch  dethrones  at  times  his  god- 
dess Laura,  however  elsewhere  exalted  by  the  hyperbole 
of  her  lover's  exquisite  poetry.  Petrarch  is  finished  in 
diction,  possessed  of  a  ruling  sense  of  design  and  skilful 
in  the  adornment  of  his  verse  with  mythological  and 
classical  allusions.  He  is  original  in  his  employment  of 
metaphor,  which  he  occasionally  carries  to  a  degree  of 
logical  nicety  that  recalls  mediaeval  allegory.  Elsewhere 
his  metaphors  are  fetched  from  afar  and  imaginatively 
wrought,  leading  on,  in  his  imitators  Italian  and  English, 

^  See  J.  B.  Fletcher,  The  Religion  of  Beauty  in  Women,  New  York, 
1911. 


IN  THE  ENGLAND  OF  THE  TUDORS    39 

to  the  extravagance  and  bad  taste  known  as  "the  con- 
ceit." 

It  was  Petrarch  that  Wyatt  followed,  not  Dante.  Fif-  \ 
teen  of  the  thirty-two  sonnets  of  Wyatt  are  actual  trans-  a 
lations  of  sonnets  of  Petrarch  and  seven  more  are  adapta-  I 
tions.  It  cannot  be  said  that  Wyatt  selected  Petrarch  at 
his  best  or  for  the  best  that  is  in  the  Italian  poet.  Wyatt 
seems  mainly  to  have  been  attracted  to  his  originals  here 
for  the  purpose  of  exercise  and  example.   Metrically  espe- 
cially, Petrarch  served  him  while  he  was  working  away 
from  the  old  accentual  system  of  English  versification     \    ' 
to  a  more  careful  ordering  of  syllables  whereby  in  time  a  ^^ '[ 
smoothness,  not  hitherto  affected  by  English  lyrists,  be- 
came one  of  the  characteristics  of  English  verse.   But 
Italian  was  not  the  only  influence  on  Wyatt.   While  but  a 
single  sonnet  of  his  has  been  traced  to  its  actual  French 
original,  many  of  Wyatt's  love  poems  show  a  reflection  in 
form  and  sentiment  of  French  popular  poetry,  and  he 
practised  the  rondeau  with  success.^    Historically  the  po- 
sition of  Wyatt  is  important,  representing  as  he  does  the 
lyric  of  the  twenties  and  thirties;  intrinsically  few  of  his 
imitations,  repeating  as  they  do  the  accepted  common- 
places of  other  men,  can  be  ranked  very  high.   To  speak  of 
Wyatt  even  when  at  his  best  as  one  who  surpasses  Pe- 
trarch in  imagination  and  all  the  English  sonneteers,  "till 
we  come  to  Shakespeare,"  in  passion,  is  to  obscure  the 

'  On  Wyatt's  relations  to  foregoing  poetry,  French  and  Italian,  see 
esperially  Padelford's  Introduction,  Early  Sixteenth  Century  Lyrics, 
1007,  pp.  xtx-xlix. 


40  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

significance  of  words.  For  a  dozen,  or  perhaps  a  score  of 
his  lyrics,  to  say  nothing  of  his  sincere  and  capable  satire, 
Wyatt  takes  an  honorable  place  as  the  earliest  outrider 
of  distinction  in  the  brilliant  procession  of  Elizabethan 
poetry  so  soon  to  follow. 

As  to  Surrey,  he  is  as  genuine  a  disciple  of  Petrarch  as 
of  Wyatt.  His  verse  belongs  between  1528  and  1547, 
in  which  latter  year  he  was  executed  on  a  trumped-up 
charge  of  treason  just  before  King  Henry's  own  death. 
A  smoother  and  more  certain  metrist,  Surrey  had  learned 
by  Wyatt's  experiments,  though  he  reached  not  beyond 
the  range  of  his  master  in  theme  or  manner  of  treatment. 
Surrey's  are  the  competences  of  expression  and  the  refine- 
ments of  the  courtier.  A  delicate  sense,  too,  for  the  influ- 
ence of  nature  has  been  claimed  for  him  and  a  sensitive- 
ness to  physical  beauty.  Wyatt  and  Surrey  are  the  two 
particular  stars  of  Puttenham's  "  new  company  of  courtly 
makers,"  "the  two  chief  lanterns,"  he  elsewhere  calls 
them,  "to  all  others  that  have  since  employed  their  pens 
upon  English  poesy."  The  other  names  —  Thomas,  Lord 
Vaux,  Sir  Francis  Bryan  and  Edward  Somerset,  Anthony 
Lee,  brother-in-law  of  Wyatt,  and  George  Boleyn,  Lord 
Rochford,  Queen  Anne's  brother,  —  none  of  them  need 
concern  us.  Nicholas  Grimald  is  more  important;  for 
aside  from  his  touch  with  the  classics  and  his  neglect  of 
Petrarch,  Grimald  was  the  probable  editor  of  the  first 
edition  of  TotteVs  Miscellany  (popularly  so  called  from 
the  publisher),  the  volume  into  which  was  gathered,  long 
after  their  writing,  the  lyrical  poetry  of  Wyatt,  Surrey, 


IN  THE  ENGLAND  OF  THE  TUDORS    41 

and  their  contemporaries,  besides  the  later  verse  of 
Grimald  himself  with  that  of  some  others.  Tottel's  is  the 
earliest  of  the  several  poetical  miscellanies  of  Elizabethan 
times.  First  published  in  1557,  just  before  the  queen's 
accession,  the  collection  went  through  eight  editions  by 
1587,  and  was  then  superseded  by  collections  of  newer 
poetry.  Still  Cousin  Abraham  Slender  was  not  altogether 
old-fashioned  when,  some  ten  years  later,  he  exclaimed: 
"I  had  rather  than  forty  shillings  I  had  my  Book  of  Songs 
and  Sonnets  here,"  for  this  was  none  other  than  this 
notable  collection. 

The  miscellany  was  a  favorite  type  of  book  in  Eliza- 
beth's day.  It  was  by  no  means  confined  merely  to  lyrical 
poetrv' ;  for  there  was  the  famous  Mirror  Jor  Magistrates, 
a  collection  of  elegiac  historical  narratives  in  verse, 
and  there  were  books  such  as  England's  Parnassus  and 
Belvedere  or  the  Garden  of  the  Muses,  both  of  them 
treasuries  of  poetical  quotations.  The  idea  of  a  miscel- 
laneous collection  of  poetry  seemed  to  have  been  derived 
from  the  manuscript  notebooks  which  scholars  and  gen- 
tlemen of  culture  were  accustomed  to  keep,  in  which 
to  record  their  own  thoughts  at  times,  but,  more  com- 
monly, some  translated  or  transcribed  bit  of  poetry  which 
was  passing  about  in  literary  circles  and  which  the  tran- 
scriber considered  worthy  of  preservation.  Jonson's 
Timber,  or  Discoveries,  years  later,  was  a  commonplace 
book  in  which  that  worthy  jotted  down  passages  trans- 
lated and  expanded  from  his  private  reading;  and 
"Shakespeare's    sugared    sonnets    among    his    private 


42  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

friends"  attest  the  custom  of  the  circulation  of  poetry 
in  manuscript.  TotteVs  Miscellany  was  followed  by  TIw 
Paradise  of  Dainty  Devices,  in  1576,  which  ran  through 
nine  editions  by  1606;  by  A  Gorgeous  Gallery  of  Gallant 
Inventions,  in  1578;  and  by  Clement  Robinson's  Handful 
of  Pleasant  Delights,  the  only  extant  issue  of  which  dates 
1584.  The  Paradise  contained  work  of  William  Hunnis 
and  Richard  Edwards,  both  of  them  musicians  and  con- 
tributors to  the  earliest  Elizabethan  drama,  some  verse 
of  Gascoigne,  and  a  poem  or  so  by  the  Earl  of  Oxford, 
who  enjoyed  the  distinction  of  being  the  enemy  of  Sidney. 
The  work  of  these  earlier  miscellanies  is  the  work  of 
apprentices,  but  most  of  them  were  employed  on  good 
models.  The  Paradise  is  graver  and  more  moral  in  tone 
than  Tottel ;  A  Gorgeous  Gallery  is  less  brilliant  than  its 
title;  A  Handful  of  Pleasant  Delights  is  "a  song-book 
rather  than  a  book  of  poetry,"  and  is  supposed  to  have 
been  originally  licensed  as  early  as  1561.  Several  charm- 
ing songs  are  here  to  be  found;  and  it  may  be  surmised 
that  it  represents  less  strictly  the  poetry  of  the  court  than 
its  fellow  miscellanies.  The  interesting  thing  about  the 
most  popular  miscellanies  of  Elizabethan  lyrical  poetry 
consists  in  the  fact  that  they  represent  the  selective 
taste  of  their  time  and  bear  eloquent  testimony  of  the 
diffusiveness  of  literary  taste  and  appreciation. 

The  most  striking  figure  in  English  poetry  between 
Wyatt  and  Spenser  is  that  of  George  Gascoigne,  courtier, 
soldier,  and  poet,  who  rejoiced  in  the  motto  Tarn  Marti 
quam  Mercurio,  and  distinguished  himself  in  the  drama. 


IN  THE  ENGLAND  OF  THE  TUDORS    43 

in  satirical  and  narrative  poetry,  as  well  as  in  the  lyric. 
While  Gascoigne  in  a  sense  continued  the  line  of  develop- 
ment set  for  the  lyric  by  Wyatt  and  Surrey,  he  infused 
into  his  poetry  a  spirit  far  more  thoroughly  English  and 
affected  a  return  to  older  phrases  and  idioms.  The  smooth- 
ness and  ease  of  Gascoigne's  verse  show  that  he  gave 
minute  attention  to  musical  effect;  and  this,  with  a  fre- 
quent happiness  of  figure,  directness  and  sincerity,  occa- 
sional passion  and  genuine  force,  sufficiently  justify  the 
estimation  in  which  the  poet  was  held  in  his  own  day. 
In  Gascoigne  the  personal  note  becomes  more  pronounced. 
Much  of  his  poetry  is  autobiographical,  and  all  of  it 
egotistic  and  personal  to  a  degree  rarely  attained  by  the 
dolorous  complaints  of  the  shadowy  typical  lovers  in 
TotteVs  Miscellany  and  The  Paradise  of  Dainty  Devices. 
In  the  year  1575  when  Gascoigne,  with  two  years  yet 
to  live,  revised  the  earlier  edition  (1573)  of  his  Ilundreth 
Sundry  Flowers  into  the  Posies  of  George  Gascoigne, 
Spenser,  Greville,  and  Lodge  were  already  at  Cambridg3 
and  Lyly  and  Pcele  at  Oxford,  which  Sidney  had  but 
recently  quitted  to  come  up  to  court  and  proceed  upon 
his  travels  abroad.  Spenser  had  poetized  for  several  years 
and  was  soon  to  discuss  with  his  mentor,  Gabriel  Harvey, 
momentous  questions  concerning  English  hexameters 
and  the  like.  Lodge,  with  perhaps  Greene  and  Watson, 
must  have  been  writing  poetry  long  before  each  sought  in 
turn  for  literary  recognition  in  London.  Other  lyrists, 
who  had  pr()l)ably  begun  to  write  in  the  seventies,  were 
Greville,  Sidney's  friend,  Breton,  the  stop-son  of  Gas- 


44  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

coigne,  and  Munday,  dramatist,  pamphleteer,  informer, 
and  translator,  but  poet  as  well.  Raleigh,  with  his  high 
and  insolent  vein,  was  never  more  than  an  occasional 
visitor  to  the  regions  of  the  muses;  and  Churchyard, 
Turberville,  Googe,  translator  of  eclogues,  all  were  older 
men  and  lyrical  in  no  true  sense. 

But  with  all  these  younger  poets  preparing  to  burst 
into  song,  metrical  experiment  was  still  more  than  ever 
the  order  of  the  day.  Gascoigne  had  continued  the  prac- 
tice of  the  sonnet  in  the  modified  English  form  which 
Surrey  had  introduced.  But  the  editor  of  the  first  edition 
of  Tottel,  Grimald  or  whoever  he  may  have  been,  was  so 
ignorant  of  the  form  of  the  rondeau  that  he  was  unable 
to  preserve  it  in  printing.  In  addition  to  the  old  short 
riming  measures  and  ballad  metres,  the  lyrists  of  the 
earlier  anthologies  adopted  as  a  favorite  the  inexpressibly 
tiresome  "poulter's  measure,"  an  alexandrine  line  {i.e., 
six  iambics)  followed  by  a  septenary  {i.e.,  seven),  riming 
as  a  couplet,  thus: 

Who  justly  may  rejoice  in  ought  under  the  sky. 
As  life  or  lands,  as  friends  or  fruits,  which  only  live  to  die  ? 

But  clearly  a  metre,  so  literally  at  sixes  and  sevens,  could 
not  long  survive  ridicule  and  parody,  and  few  poems  were 
written  in  it  after  the  eighties.  Gascoigne  had  declared 
in  a  sensible  little  treatise  on  the  making  of  English  verse 
that  "ordinarily  we  use  no  foot  save  the  iambic,"  though 
he  recognized  the  existence  of  other  ways  of  ordering 
syllables  metrically.  But  long  before  Gascoigne's  time, 
worthy  Roger  Ascham  had  raised  the  question  of  a  possi- 


IN  THE  ENGLAND  OF  THE  TUDORS  45 

ble  future  for  English  poetry,  freed  from  "the  Gothish 
barbarism  of  rime"  and  practising  the  orderly  and 
established  versification  of  the  ancient  Greeks  and 
Romans.  This  subject  absorbed  the  attention  and  the 
pens  of  scholars  throughout  Elizabeth's  reign,  and  re- 
sulted not  only  in  the  absurdities  of  English  hexameters, 
such  as  those  of  Harvey,  Fraunce,  and  Stanihurst,  but  in 
an  admirably  complete  series  of  experiments  by  Sidney 
and  other  members  of  what  Harvey  called  the  Areopagus 
Club.  Indeed,  the  last  word  on  this  subject  was  that  of 
the  poet  Daniel,  who  answered  Campion's  plea  for  classical 
lyrical  measures  in  all  but  the  last  year  of  Elizabeth's 
reign.  Experimentation  with  classical  metres  and  the 
theories  about  them  little  affected  the  history  of  the  lyric. 
It  was  otherwise  with  the  similar  experimentation  of  Sid- 
ney and  Watson  in  the  lyrical  forms  of  Italian  poetry.^ 

With  the  year  1580,  the  daylight  of  Elizabethan  liter- 
ature was  pouring  in  flood  and  the  lyric  chorus  was  in 
full  throat.  And  now  the  inventive  fancy  of  the  age  in 
seeking  for  expression  hit  upon  certain  literary  modes, 
often  trying  one  for  the  nonce  to  the  partial  exclusion  of 
others,  and,  wearying  of  it,  turning  to  something  new. 
In  the  lyric  the  pastoral  was  the  favorite  mode  up  to  1590, 
when  it  was  superseded  by  the  popularity  of  the  sonnet. 
Later  came  the  heyday  of  poetry  written  specifically  to 
be  set  to  music.  Let  us  turn  first  to  the  pastoral.  The 
pastoral  is  not  a  literary  form.    It  is  really  a  way  of 

'  On  the  Rfncral  subjert,  8ce  the  present  writer's  Poetic  and  Verse 
Criliciam  oj  the  licign  of  Queen  Elizabeth,  1891. 


46  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

looking  at  life  artistically,  and  may  be  represented  on 
canvas  or  in  marble  as  it  may  be  expressed  by  word  in 
prose  or  verse  of  different  varieties.  The  conventions  of 
the  pastoral  ideal,  with  its  joys  of  an  impossible  golden 
age,  its  perennial  bloom  and  summer,  its  pursuing  swains 
and  coy  and  fleeting  shepherdesses,  are  too  well  known  to 
require  repetition  here.  Suffice  it  for  us  to  recall  that 
pastoral  poetry,  like  poetry  of  so  many  other  forms,  came 
late  to  England  from  Italy  and  France,  and  to  recognize 
that  the  delicate  and  amorous  sentiments,  pervading  the 
pastoral  no-man's  land  of  a  pleasing  but  conventionalized 
imagination,  lent  themselves  naturally  and  easily  to  the 
expression  of  the  lighter  lyrical  emotions.  Spenser's  fine 
series  of  eclogues.  The  Shepherds'  Calendar,  in  print  by 
1579  and  immediately  acclaimed  for  its  excellence,  had 
much  to  do  with  confirming  the  pastoral  fashion.  A 
charming  feature  of  The  Calendar  is  the  several  songs  of 
great  beauty  and  elaboration  interlarded  in  the  narrative 
and  dialogue,  all  of  them  in  the  pastoral  mode.  Nowhere 
else  is  Spenser  so  full  of  lyrical  music  as  in'"Perigot  and 
Willie's  Roundelay,"  the  "Canzon  Pastoral"  in  praise  of 
Elizabeth,  or  the  stately  "Dirge  for  Dido,"  all  of  them 
songs  of  The  Shepherds'  Calendar.  Brevity  and  directness 
were  neither  of  them  distinguishing  qualities  of  Spenser, 
and  therefore  we  do  not  find  him  achieving  his  greatest 
success  in  the  song  as  such.  However  lofty  the  thought 
of  the  "  Four  Hymns  "  in  honor  of  earthly  and  of  heavenly 
love  and  beauty,  they  are,  when  all  has  been  said,  little 
more  than  a  rendering  in  noble  verse  of  the  Platonic 


IN  THE  ENGLAND  OF  THE  TUDORS    47 

ideas  on  these  subjects,  examined  through  the  lenses  of 
Ficino's  commentary.  Lyrical  in  a  deeper  and  wider  sense 
than  the  songs  of  The  Calendar,  though  equally  in  the 
pastoral  mode,  are  the  "  Prothalamion "  and  "Epitha- 
lamion"  (the  latter  signalizing  his  own  wedding),  with 
their  splendid  sweep  of  intricate  stanza  sustained  with 
masterly  effect  and  their  charming,  recurrent  musical 
refrains.  Happier  than  Spenser  in  this  matter  of  brevity 
and  directness  was  Sidney,  although  the  experimental 
character  of  the  songs  of  the  Arcadia,  modelled,  as  so 
many  of  them  are,  on  exotic  foreign  models  —  the 
madrigal,  the  sestina,  ierza  rima,  to  say  no  more  of 
classical  experiments  —  precluded  in  most  of  Sidney's 
pastoral  lyrics  more  than  a  qualified  success.  It  is,  indeed, 
to  lesser  men  that  we  must  look  for  the  perfection  of  the 
Elizabethan  lyric  in  the  pastoral  mode.  It  was  Breton 
who  sang: 

In  the  merry  month  of  May, 

In  a  morn  by  break  of  day, 
,    With  a  troop  of  damsels  playing 

Forth  the  wood  forsooth  a  Maying; 

and  how,  "in  time  of  yore," 

Yea  and  nay  was  thought  an  oath 
That  wa,s  not  to  be  tloubted. 

It  was  Marlowe  who  offered  his  shepherdess  love, 

A  fap  of  flowers  and  a  kirtle 
IOnibroiderc<l  all  witli  Icavcvs  of  myrtle; 

A  gown  made  of  the  (incest  wool 
Which  from  our  [iretty  lambs  wc  pull; 


48  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

Fur-linM  slipiiers  for  the  cold 
With  buckles  of  the  purest  gold. 

And  it  was  Greene  who  asks: 

If  country  loves  such  sweet  desires  do  gain. 
What  lady  would  not  love  a  shepherd  swain  ? 

Among  the  poets  to  live  long  after  this  period  in  which 
the  pastoral  ruled  over  lyrical  poetry,  none  continued  the 
mode  so  persistently  nor  so  imbued  his  work  with  its 
spirit  as  Michael  Drayton,  for  his  talents  and  originality 
ever  to  be  regarded  as  the  greatest  of  the  followers  of 
Spenser,  Drayton's  first  secular  work.  The  Shepherd's 
Garland,  1593,  is  entirely  in  the  pastoral  mode;  and  while 
he  wandered  far  from  lyrical  poetry  in  his  various  histori- 
cal endeavors,  narrative  and  other,  much  of  the  embel- 
lishment of  his  famous  Polyolhion,  and  of  his  fairy -poem 
the  Nymphidia,  The  Owl,  a  bird-fable,  and  The  Man  in 
the  Moon,  a  version  of  the  story  of  Endymion,  is  of  the 
pastoral,  at  times  distinctly  of  the  lyrical,  kind.  Again  and 
again  Drayton  reaches  lyrical  success  within  the  strict- 
est limitations  of  the  lyrical  art  and  alike  within  and  be- 
yond the  conventional  bounds  of  lyrical  subject-matter. 
The  "Song  to  Sirena,"  and  the  odes  "To  the  Cambro- 
Britans,"  on  "Agincourt,"  and  "To  the  Virginian  Voy- 
age" alone  suflBciently  attest  this,  even  if  we  omit  to  men- 
tion the  famous  sonnet  "Since  there's  no  help,"  in  which 
Drayton  tries  conclusions,  and  successfully,  with  his  per- 
sonal friend,  Shakespeare.  It  is  not  to  be  wondered  that, 
next  to  Spenser,  Drayton  was  the  most  popular  general 
poet  of  his  day. 


IN  THE  ENGLAND  OF  THE  TUDORS    49 

With  some  exceptions,  the  choicest  Elizabethan  lyrics 
in  the  pastoral  mode  were  gathered  into  the  volume 
known  as  England's  Helicon,  edited  by  John  Bodenham  in 
1600  and  reprinted  in  1614.  Besides  the  greater  names  of 
Spenser  and  Sidney,  here  are  to  be  found  lyrics  of  Mun- 
day,  Breton,  Constable,  and  Greene,  of  Drayton,  Lodge, 
Peele,  Barnfield,  and  many  others.  While  the  pastoral 
character  is  pervasive  in  England's  Helicon,  some  earlier 
poems  even  being  "  pastoralized  "  by  such  substitutions 
as  swain  for  man,  or  shepherd  for  lover,  to  conform  to  the 
current  fancy,  there  are  many  poems  of  a  less  specialized 
type,  and  some  marking  the  more  recent  interest  in  the 
sonnet.  England's  Helicon  borrowed  from  The  Phcenix 
Nest,  a  miscellany  printed  in  1593,  containing  many  poems 
of  Lodge  and  Breton.  Both  of  these  collections  disclose 
a  very  direct  contact  with  foreign  models  alike  in  the  titles 
of  poems  and  in  their  metrical  and  stanzaic  forms.  Sonnet 
is  ai)plied  to  anything;  madrigal,  ode,  and  song  are  em- 
ployed with  equal  looseness;  occasionally  idyl,  barginet 
(i.e.,  bcrgcrct),  canzon,  are  used  with  "pastoral,"  as  pas- 
toral sonnet,  pastoral  ode,  canzon  pastoral,  or  simply  pas- 
toral. Several  titles  of  pastoral  songs  are  derived  from 
popular  terms  for  dances :  as  the  jig,  a  merry  irregular  song 
in  short  measure,  more  or  less  comic,  sometimes  sung  and 
danced  by  the  clown  to  an  accoinj)aiiimcnt  of  pipe  and 
tabor;  the  hraule,  in  English  brawl,  similarly  a  dance  of 
lively  nature;  the  rourulelay,  a  light  poem,  originally  a 
shepherd's  dance,  in  which  a  phrase  is  repeated,  often  as 
a  verse  or  stanzaic  refrain.    Several  titles  in  these  collec- 


50  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

tions  are  English,  however  translated  from  foreign  lan- 
guages: such  is  the  passion,  affected  by  Watson,  conten- 
tion, complaint,  lament,  all  sufficiently  clear  in  meaning, 
however  carelessly  employed.  The  only  metre  which  can 
be  affirmed  to  have  become  in  any  wise  identified  with 
the  pastoral  mode,  is  the  octosyllabic  iambic  measure, 
riming  either  in  couplets  or  alternating  with  its  deriva- 
tive, heptasyllabic  trochaics.  Both  measures  are  fre- 
quently employed  by  Breton;  the  latter  is  the  metre  of 
Barnfield's  famous  "Ode,"  "As  it  fell  upon  a  day,"  long 
erroneously  attributed  to  Shakespeare.^  v 

A  favorite  little  verse  form  of  the  period  was  the 
madrigal.  Originally  an  Italian  shepherd's  song,  the  mad- 
rigal had  a  technical  significance  in  music  as  in  verse. 
In  the  latter,  while  the  term  was  employed  with  much 
looseness,  the  madrigal  may  be  defined  as  a  short  inte- 
gral poem  of  lyrical  or  epigrammatic  character,  made 
up  usually  of  a  system  of  tercets  followed  by  one  or  more 
couplets,  the  verses  commonly  of  two  different  lengths  and 
varied  independently  of  the  rimes,  which,  after  the  genius 
of  Italian,  are  preferably  feminine.  Thus, 

Say  gentle  nymphs,  that  tread  these  mountains. 
Whilst  sweetly  you  sit  playing. 
Saw  you  my  Daphne  straying 

Along  your  crystal  fountains  ? 
If  that  you  chance  to  meet  her. 
Kiss  her  and  kindly  greet  her; 

'  See  Arber's  reprint  of  Bamfield,  English  Scholars'  Library,  No.  14, 
1882,  pp.  xix  ff. 


IN  THE  ENGLAND  OF  THE  TUDORS    51 

Then  these  sweet  garlands  take  her. 
And  say  for  me,  I  never  will  forsake  her. 

Favorable  specimens  of  the  madrigal  may  be  found 
in  Nicholas  Yonge's  Musica  Transalpina,  1588,  and 
Thomas  Watson's  First  Set  of  Italian  Madrigals  Englished, 
1590.  Indeed,  both  of  these  books  purport  to  be  no  more 
than  translations  of  well-known  song-books  by  Marenzio, 
Con  verso,  and  other  Italian  composers.^  With  the  song- 
books  of  William  Byrd,  publisher,  musician,  possibly  poet 
as  well,  the  adaptation  of  the  madrigal  by  English  poets 
and  musicians  set  in.  In  the  many  song-books  that  fol- 
lowed, the  work  of  Est,  Morley,  W^ilbye,  Dowland,  Jones, 
Weelkes,  Hume,  and  many  others,  the  term  madrigal  vies 
with  song,  air,  ballad,  ballet,  canzon  and  canzonet,  to 
designate  any  lyric  set  to  music. 

To  return  to  the  immediate  influence  of  contemporary 
It^jjaji  formsof  verse  on  the  Eliza  belhaa-lyTic.  besides 
Sidneyj_the  most  important  of  these  experimenters  was 
Thomas  Watson,  just  mentioned  for  his  Madrigals  Eng- 
lished. In  addition  to  this  work,  Watson  published  his 
Passionate  Century  oj  Love  in  1582,  and,  in  1593,  his  Tears 
of  Fancy.  Watson  is  not  only  a  Petrarchist,  but  a  scholar 
well  versed  in  the  classics;  and  he  levies  on  French  con- 
temporary fKJcts  as  well.  IlHpi)ily  for  later  .sciiolarship, 
there  was  enough  of  the  pedant  in  Watson  to  cause  him 
carefully  to  name  his  sources.  As  to  form,  Watson's  lyrics 
are  largely  irrogular  "sonnets"  of  eighteen  lines.    His 

'  On  tins  topic- scf  V.  I.  ('itrpcntor,  "Thomas  Wat.son's  Italian  Mjulri- 
Rali  P'njjIiMlir-d,  I'lDO,"  Jniirti'il  nf  flrrmnnir  I'/iilnlogj/,  u,  .'32.'J. 


52  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

work  is  negligent  and  his  merit  as  a  poet  lies  little  beyond 
what  he  was  able  to  take  over  from  the  foreign  coffers  that 
he  rifled  so  frankly.  Far  more  purely  Italianate  and  con- 
summate as  a  metrist  was  Barnabe  Barnes  who,  in  his 
Parthenope  and  Parthenophil,  published  in  1593,  continues 
the  Italian  impulse  of  Sidney.  Parthenope  and  Parthe- 
nophil purports  to  be  a  sequence  of  sonnets,  but  inter- 
spersed are  many  canzons,  sestinas,  and  odes  in  the  rich 
and  exuberant  manner  of  the  Renaissance  Italian  poets, 
rather  than  a  mere  borrowing  of  their  ideas  and  phrases. 
Of  these  three  experimenters  in  the  grafting  of  Italian 
poetry  on  the  stock  of  the  English  lyric,  Watson  translates 
and  little  more;  Barnes  successfully  reaches  the  form  of 
his  models;  Sidney  alone  assimilates  their  spirit  to  the 
emotional  processes  of  his  own  genius.  In  order  of  prior- 
ity in  time,  these  poets  range,  Sidney,  Watson,  Barnes;  in 
order  of  poetic  value  the  last  two  change  places  and  stand 
below  and  apart  from  the  eminence  of  their  great  fellow. 
The  spirit  of  mid-Elizabethan  lyrical  poetry  is  the 
spirit  of  youth  and  the  joy,  the  inconsequence,  and  the 
unconsciousness  of  youth.  This  poetry  is  pagan,  care- 
free, little  oppressed  with  the  problems  of  life,  frank  in  its 
cult  of  beauty  and  in  its  delight  in  the  brave  shows  of  the 
world.  It  revels  in  the  art  of  song,  in  variety  and  experi- 
ment in  verse,  in  the  artifices  of  style;  it  plays  upon  words 
and  elaborates  ingenious  figures  of  speech;  it  bubbles 
with  voluble  joy  or,  if  cast  down,  its  despair  or  petulance 
are  those  of  childhood.  An  unknown  poet  of  England's 
Helicon  sings : 


IN  THE  ENGLiVND  OF  THE  TUDORS  53 

Praised  be  Diana's  faire  and  harmless  light. 
Praised  be  the  dews  wherewith  she  moists  the  ground. 
Praised  be  her  beams,  the  glory  of  the  night, 
Praised  be  her  power,  by  which  all  powers  abound. 

In  heaven  queen  she  is  among  the  spheres. 
She  mistress-like  makes  all  things  to  be  pure: 
Eternity  in  her  oft  change  she  bears; 
She  beauty  is,  by  her  the  fair  endure. 

And  Thomas  Lodge  describes  the  Rosalind,  on  which 
Shakespeare  was  later  to  model  Orlando's  Rosalind,  in 
this  ecstasy  of  a  lover's  delight: 

With  orient  pearl,  with  ruby  red. 

With  marble  white,  with  sapphire  blue 

Her  body  every  way  is  fed, 

Yet  soft  in  touch  and  sweet  in  view: 
Heigh  ho,  fair  Rosaline! 

Nature  herself  her  shape  admires; 

The  gods  are  wounded  in  her  sight; 
And  love  forsakes  his  heavenly  fires 

And  at  her  eyes  his  brand  doth  light: 
Heigh  ho,  would  s]h\  were  mine! 

But  there  were  graver  notes  even  in  this  early  concert 
of  joy.  Fulke  Grevillc,  boyhood  friend  of  Sidney,  left 
behind  him,  years  later,  a  miscellaneous  collection  of 
poetry  mostly  lyrical,  much  of  which  must  have  been 
written  in  the  days  of  the  Areopagus.  Ca-lica,  as  this 
foUcction  is  railed,  is  only  in  part  lyrical  and  remarkably 
free  from  foreign  and  extraneous  influences,  metrical  or 
f)lhor.  Many  of  these  [)oems  arc  characterized  by  a  depth 
and  intricacy  of  thouglit   that  suggest    the  manner  of 


54  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

Donne  a  little  later.  But  Greville's  ponderings  led  him 
from  the  lyric  into  poetical  disquisitions  and  into  state- 
craft ;  J)onne  retained  his  lyricism  iq_the  eloquence  of 
the  pulpit.  Another  EhzaBeUian,  to  whom  poetry  was 
the  means  to  a  more  serious  end  than  art,  was  Father 
Southwell,  one  of  the  Jesuit  brethren  who  gave  at  last 
his  life  to  the  cause  of  turning  England  back  to  the 
older  faith.  Southwell  wrote  in  old-fashioned  metres  and 
was  as  unaffected  as  Greville  by  the  prevalent  Italianism, 
pastoralism,  and  other  passing  poetical  fashions,  with  the 
exception  of  one,  the  "  conceit."  How  it  came  to  pass  that 
the  splendid  courtier  Sidney,  responsible  for  the  Pe- 
trarchan conceit  in  English  poetry,  should  have  claimed, 
as  one  of  the  earliest  and  most  certain  of  his  disciples 
in  this  respect,  the  holy  Father  Southwell,  is  one  of  the 
things  difficult  for  ingenious  scholarship  to  explain.  To 
Southwell  the  lyric  was  a  means  to  the  worship  of  God 
and  to  the  uplift  of  the  human  soul  struggling  among  the 
snares  and  sorrows  of  the  world.  The  lavishing  on  his 
work  of  a  fervid  and  ingenious  imagination  dignifies 
Southwell  at  times  with  the  utterance  of  a  true  poet. 
Many  a  poet  of  the  day  turned  from  the  vanities  of  worldly 
poetry  to  express  religious  feeling  in  song  or  to  translate 
or  imitate  the  Psalms  of  David,  those  accepted  realiza- 
tions of  poetic  fervency  and  devotion.  None  the  less 
Southwell  stands  forth  conspicuously  among  Elizabeth- 
ans as  the  only  poet  of  rank  who  devoted  his  art  undivid- 
edly  to  what  was  then  called  "divine  uses." 
The  conceit  has  already  been  several  times  mentioned 


IN  THE  ENGLAND  OF  THE  TUDORS    55 

in  these  pages  and  the  subject  calls  for  discrimination. 
A  conceit,  in  the  parlance  of  the  old  poets,  was  any  strik- 
ing, apt,  or  original  figure  of  speech  employed  to  illus- 
trate or  beautify  a  passage  rhetorically,  whether  in  verse 
or  in  prose.  Obviously  this  perfectly  reasonable  effort 
was  prone  from  the  first  to  degenerate  into  extravagance 
and  effort,  in  which  the  thought  was  apt  to  be  lost  in  the 
illustration.  Thus  when  the  ink  that  Sidney  uses  runs 
by  its  nature  into  Stella's  name,  when  pain  moves  his 
pen,  and  the  paper  is  pale  with  despair,  we  have  conceit 
pure  and  simple,  though  doubtless  born  naturally  enough, 
as  elsewhere  in  Sidney,  of  a  poet's  quick  discernment  of 
likenesses  and  association  of  remote  ideas.  No  less  ex- 
travagant is  JulieL's  wish  that  Night  should  take  Romeo 

cut  him  out  in  little  stars. 
And  he  will  make  the  face  of  heaven  so  fine 
That  all  the  world  will  be  in  love  with  night; 
And  pay  no  worship  to  the  garish  sun; 

though  here  even  more  certainly  do  we  feel  that  the 
intensity  of  Juliet's  passion  is  such  that  a  trifle  like  this, 
bizarre  though  it  certainly  is,  is  carried  naturally  on  the 
impetuous  current  of  her  thoughts.  When  we  turn  to  some 
of  the  ingenuities  of  Donne  —  that  of  the  compass  for 
example,  in  the  famous  "Valediction  forbidding  Mourn- 
ing," pn^longcd,  cdVctively  it  must  be  confessed,  llirough 
three  or  four  stanza.s  —  we  do  not  feel  quite  so  sure.  And 
yet  the  habit  of  Donne's  mind  was  subtle  an<l  Ihis  par- 
ticular poem  is  exciuisitely  sincere.  Southwell  likens  the 
tears  of  Christ  to  the  pools  of  Ileshbon,  baths  where 


56  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

happy  spirits  dive;  and,  in  throes  of  spiritual  unworthi- 
ness,  tells  how  he  drinks  drops  of  the  heavenly  flood  and 
bemires  his  Maker  with  returning  mud.  And  yet  the 
cause  of  these  conceits  may  be  attributable  to  many 
things  beside  mere  carelessness  or  bad  taste.  Sidney  lav- 
ished metaphor  on  his  poetry,  as  on  his  prose,  and  failed 
at  times,  from  a  romantic  spirit  that  could  brook  no 
restraint,  to  discriminate  or  exercise  his  taste.  A  similar 
obliviousness  to  the  means  of  reaching  his  end  character- 
izes the  extravagant  figures  in  the  poetry  of  Southwell. 
On  the  other  hand,  other  poets,  especially  later  ones, 
are  often  deliberately  ingenious  and  the  effect  is  that  of 
an  imagination,  mediocre  at  best,  taxed  to  its  extreme 
effort.  It  is  difficult  to  believe  that  an  allusion  by  Lynche, 
one  of  the  minor  sonneteers,  to 

The  tallest  ship  that  cuts  the  angry  wave 
And  plows  the  seas  of  Saturn's  second  sun, 

was  not  ingeniously  wrought  out,  not  without  labor,  as 
Jonson  would  have  put  it,  on  the  anvil  of  thought.  So, 
too,  Cowley's  words  of  the  artificers  who  cut  the  wooden 
images  that  adorned  the  temple  of  Jerusalem,  that  they 

Carve  the  trunks  and  breathing  shapes  bestow. 
Giving  the  trees  more  life  than  when  they  grow, 

is  assuredly  not  a  thought  that  could  have  occurred  off- 
hand, or  unpremeditated,  or  to  any  one  whose  avowed 
quest  was  not  the  saying  of  something  in  a  manner  in 
which  it  had  not  been  said  before.  That  which  men  do 
naturally  they  do  with  grace.    Excessive  effort  is  com- 


IN  THE  ENGLAND  OF  THE  TUDORS    57 

monly  awkward.  Hence  the  frequent  unhappiness  of  the 
conceit  when  it  became  a  matter  of  inventive  preparation, 
not  an  extravagance  born  of  uncontrolled  imagination; 
hence  its  frequent  preposterousness  and  want  of  taste. 
It  is  a  mistake  to  ascribe  the  introduction  of  the  conceit 
to  any  one  English  poet,  or  to  hold  that  Gongora,  Marino, 
or  any  other  foreign  poet  is  specifically  responsible  for  it 
in  English  literature.  The  conceit  developed  under  the 
influence  of  Petrarch,  whose  personal  good  taste  for  the 
most  part  preserved  him  from  its  excesses.  It  was  the 
Petrarchists,  whether  in  Italy,  France,  or  England,  that 
countenanced  and  developed  the  conceit  in  their  en- 
deavor to  outdo  the  hyperbole  of  their  master's  ingenious 
imagery. 

There  were  other  artificialities  besides  the  conceit  in 
the  poetrj'  of  Elizabeth's  time  which  may  be  studied  in 
Sidney  and  many  of  his  successors.  One  was  the  echo- 
sonnet.  Another  construction  was  the  sheaf,  as  it  has  been 
called,  in  which  a  series  of  comparisons  are  made  in  suc- 
cession, gathered  together  and  then  applied  in  an  equal 
number  of  ai)plications.  An  elaborate  development  of  this 
ingenuity  is  to  be  found  in  a  poem  of  two  long  stanzas 
by  Edmund  Bolton  entitled  "A  Palinode,"  in  which  such 
a  series  of  similitudes  with  their  applications  are  bandied 
back  and  forth  several  times  with  an  inventive  cleverness 
fully  justified  in  a  hai)py  and  not  unpoetic  result. 

Ah  withoreth  the  primrose  by  the  river, 

Ah  fadeth  Hummer's  sun  from  ^li'linK  foimtains. 

Ah  vani.slu'lh  tlie  light-blown  bubble  ever, 


58  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

As  melteth  snow  upon  the  mossy  mountains: 

So  melts,  so  vanisheth,  so  fades,  so  withers, 

The  rose,  the  shine,  the  bubble,  and  the  snow. 

Of  praise,  pomp,  glory,  joy,  which  short  life  gathers. 

Fair  praise,  vain  pomp,  sweet  glory,  brittle  joy. 

The  withered  primrose  by  the  mourning  river. 

The  faded  summer's  sun  from  weeping  fountains. 

The  light-blown  bubble  vanished  for  ever. 

The  molten  snow  upon  the  naked  mountains. 

Are  emblems  that  the  treasures  we  uplay. 

Soon  wither,  vanish,  fade,  and  melt  away.^ 

The  game  is  further  pursued,  and  to  its  logical  finish,  in 
a  second  stanza  of  equal  elaboration.  But  this  should 
suffice  for  what  the  more  serious  spirits  of  the  time  very 
properly  called  "these  toys." 

The  form  specifically  consecrated  to  serious  lyrical  ex- 
pression in  the  last  decade  of  Elizabeth's  reign  was  the 
sonnet.  We  have  noted  that  Wyatt  is  responsible  for  the 
introduction  of  the  sonnet  into  English;  Surrey  for  that 
change  in  the  arrangement  of  rimes  that  transformed  it 
into  a  series  of  three  alternately  riming  quatrains  con- 
cluded with  a  couplet.  Sidney  practised  the  sonnet  in 
nearly  every  variety  of  rime-arrangement  which  the  in- 
genuity of  Italian  (and  French)  sonneteers  had  invented 
before  him.  And  to  Sidney  must  be  referred  the  first 
writing  in  English  of  a  scries  or  sequence  of  sonnets  de- 
voted to  the  details  of  the  progress  of  an  affair  of  the 
heart.  Sidney's  sonnet  sequence,  Astrophel  and  Stella, 
was  most  probably  written  during  the  years  1581,  1582, 

^  See  F.  E.  Schelling,  A  Book  of  Elizabethan  Lyrics,  Boston,  1895, 
p.  110. 


IN  THE  ENGLAND  OF  THE  TUDORS    59 

and  the  earlier  part  of  1583.  It  was  not  published  until 
the  year  1591,  three  years  after  the  poet's  death,  and 
then  by  Nash,  the  procurer  of  the  copy.  The  story  con- 
veyed in  Astrophel  and  Stella  purports  to  be  the  autobio- 
graphy of  Sidney's  love  for  Lady  Penelope  Devereux, 
wliora  he  lost  by  not  knowing  his  own  heart.  The  lady 
contracted  an  unhappy  marriage  with  Lord  Rich,  and 
Sidney  subsequently  married  a  daughter  of  Sir  Francis 
Walsingham.  Indubitably  Sidney  would  never  thus  have 
addressed  Penelope  Devereux  had  not  the  cult  of  Pla- 
tonic love  descended  to  him  through  Petrarch  and  the 
rest  of  the  Italian  and  French  sonneteers  as  one  of  the 
received  literary  fashions  of  his  time.  But  it  scarcely 
follows  therefore  that  the  poignant  touches  of  feeling  in 
which  these  sonnets  abound  must  be  interpreted  merely 
as  evanescent  lyrical  expressions  of  the  new  cult.^  Even 
less  justifiable  seems  the  attitude  that  shudders  at  a 
story  which,  taken  in  its  entirety,  is  singularly  pure  and 
elevated  above  the  sordid  pruriency  of  a  vulgar  liaison. 
Indeed,  these  sonnets  produce  in  the  reader  who  is  un- 
biassed by  preconceptions  and  scholarly  ratiocinations, 

'  See  especially  J.  B.  Fletchor,  "  Did  Sidney  love  Stplla,"  reprinted  in 
his  V(jlume,  The  Ilcligion  of  licuulij  in  Woman  ;  and  S.  Lee,  Elizabethan 
Sonncl.i,  190i,  WcslininsUT,  i,  xiiii,  wlio  denies  to  the  series  "any  serious 
ttiitobiojjraphical  significance."  The  argument  of  Fletcher  from  the 
analogy  of  Sliakespeare's  sincere  rej)rescntation  of  the  passion  of  Homeo 
and  Juliet  seems  to  the  present  writer  hardly  in  pcjint.  Sidney  wjus 
not  a  dramatist,  nor  did  he  pretend  to  be  one.  Whether  other  men 
wrote  sonnets  to  ladies  whom  we  may  discover,  as  Byron  discovered 
Junius,  to  h<'  "nobmly  at  all,"  is  nothing  to  the  purpose. 


60  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

the  effect  of  a  page  from  an  actual  lover's  story,  and  it 
is  difficult,  in  view  of  the  manner  of  man  that  we  know 
Sidney  to  have  been  —  his  directness,  his  honesty  and 
integrity,  his  outspokenness,  and  need  for  expression  in 
art  —  to  accept  his  sonnets  for  anything  else.  In  his  art, 
however,  Sidney  is  franldy  a  Petrarchist,  and  to  him  is 
to  be  referred,  as  already  suggested,  the  popularizing  of 
"  the  conceit."  But  to  Sidney  is  likewise  referable  the  ele- 
vation of  the  sonnet  into  one  of  the  supreme  utterances 
of  English  lyrical  emotion;  for  metaphor,  ingenuity,  and 
toying  with  the  word  are  banished  again  and  again  in  the 
intense  lyrical  moments  of  Sidney's  poetry. 

With  the  publication  of  Sidney's  Astrophel,  the  sonnet 
craze  is  upon  us,  and  every  poetling  before  long  was  try- 
ing his  'prentice  hand  and  simulating  the  throes  and 
agonies  of  the  lyric  of  love  with  the  intervention  of  clever 
Italians  and  Frenchmen  who  had  done  the  thing  so  well 
before  him.  It  has  recently  been  shown  that  the  French 
lyrical  poets  were  imitated  and  translated  quite  as  much 
as  the  Italian  by  the  lyrists  of  the  age  of  Elizabeth,  and 
that  much  of  the  Petrarchisra  of  the  sonneteers  came 
deviously  to  England  by  way  of  French  intermediaries.' 
Thus  the  three  earliest  sonnet  sequences  of  any  import- 
ance to  follow  Sidney,  Daniel's  Delia,  Constable's  Diana, 
and  Drayton's  Idea  (all  in  print  by  1594),  took  over  the 

'  On  the  general  subject  see  A.  II.  Upham,  The  French  Influence  in 
English  Lileralure,  1908,  pp.  81  ff.  ;  Lee,  The  French  Renaissance  in 
England,  1910,  pp.  25.5  ff.  ;  and  L.  E.  Kastner,  in  the  Modern  Language 
Review,  October,  1907,  to  January,  1910. 


IN  THE  ENGLAND  OF  THE  TUDORS    61 

titles  respectively  of  the  Delie  of  Seve,  the  Diane  of  Des- 
portes,  and  Vldee  of  Claude  de  Pontuox;  and  their  titles 
were  not  their  only  borrowings.  Lodge,  in  his  Pkillis 
Honored  with  Pastoral  Sonnets,  1593,  is  the  arch  purveyor 
of  lyrical  merchandise  which  by  the  strict  decalogue  of 
modern  criticism  —  a  decalogue  as  unknown  to  the  poets 
as  to  the  buccaneers  of  Elizabeth's  time — should  be 
labelled  "made  in  France."  Delia  is  graceful  and  conven- 
tional like  the  rest  of  Daniel's  poetry  and  distinguished 
at  times  by  a  fine  aptitude  for  the  phrase,  Drayton 
has  already  received  mention  among  the  pastoralists  as 
one  of  the  earliest  and  most  successful  of  the  followers 
of  Spenser.  In  his  Ideals  Mirror  (often  reprinted)  he  is 
alike  more  original  and  more  unequal  than  Daniel,  but 
achieves  at  times  some  of  the  finest  sonnets  of  his  time. 
After  the  sonnets  of  Sidney  and  Shakespeare,  the  Amoreiti 
arc  less  specifically  imitative  while  quite  as  Italianate  as 
the  minor  sequences.  As  to  the  significance  of  Spenser's 
sonnets  at  least  we  are  in  no  danger  of  going  astray. 
They  were  addressed  to  Elizabeth  Boyle,  the  lady  whom 
the  poet  courted  and  won  for  his  wife,  and  require 
neither  symbolisnj,  tlicory,  nor  destructive  ingenuity  to 
elucidate  or  explain  to  naught  their  indubitable  meaning. 
The  greater  nuinljor  of  sonnet  sequences  are  amorous, 
ordered  to  tell  with  more  or  less  distinctness  a  story  of 
courtship  having  its  basis  in  actual  fact,  more  frequently 
disjointed  or  i)urcly  fanciful,  sometimes  little  more  than 
a  collection  of  in(le[)Pn(lrnt  sonnets  on  the  common  theme 
of  love.   But   the   Elizaljcthun   sonnet  was  devoted  to 


62  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

other  services  than  those  of  Venus.  An  interesting  series 
of  sonnets,  dedicatory,  and  occasional,  might  be  garnered 
from  the  books  of  the  age,  and  the  devotional  sonnet 
finds  a  respectable  representation  in  Constable's  Spirit- 
ual Somiets,  1593,  Barnes's  Divine  Century  of  Spiritual 
Sonnets,  1595,  and  in  the  scattered  sonnets  on  religious 
subjects  by  Donne  and  several  lesser  men.  Finally,  Chap- 
man in  a  Coronet  for  his  Mistress  Philosophy,  1594,  elo- 
quently criticises  the  exclusion  of  more  serious  themes 
from  the  love  poetry  of  the  day,  and  Sir  John  Davies 
(himself  the  author  of  an  mgenious  and  poetical  series 
of  acrostics  on  Queen  Elizabeth's  name,  Astrcea),  in  his 
Gulling  Sonnets,  of  the  next  year,  laughs  at  the  whole 
craze  and  parodies  it. 

Nor  was  the  conventional  sonnet  of  the  age  an  unfit 
theme  for  satire,  with  its  lists  of  the  beloved's  perfections, 
its  hackneyed  or  else  contorted  and  far-fetched  imagery, 
its  unoriginality  and  tiresome  repetitions.  Daniel  thus 
sings  with  the  sweet  average  sentimentality  of  his  kind: 

Restore  thy  tresses  to  the  golden  ore. 
Yield  Cytherea's  son  those  arcs  of  love. 
Bequeath  the  heavens  the  stars  that  I  adore. 
And  to  the  orient  do  thy  pearls  rcaiove. 
Yield  thy  hands'  pride  unto  the  ivory  white. 
To  Arabian  odors  give  thy  breathing  sweet. 
Restore  thy  blush  unto  Aurora  bright, 
To  Thetis  give  the  honor  of  thy  feet; 
Let  Venus  have  thy  graces  her  resigned. 
And  thy  sweet  voice  give  back  unto  the  spheres; 
But  yet  restore  thy  fierce  and  cruel  mind 
To  Hyrcan  tigers  and  to  ruthless  bears; 


IN  THE  ENGLAND  OF  THE  TUDORS  63 

Yield  to  the  marble  thy  hard  heart  again: 
So  shalt  thou  cease  to  plague,  and  I  to  pain. 

On  which  Jonson  saturninely  remarks:  "You  that  tell 
your  mistress,  her  beauty  is  all  composed  of  theft;  her 
hair  stole  from  Apollo's  goldy-locks;  her  white  and  red, 
lilies  and  roses  stolen  out  of  Paradise;  her  eyes  two  stars, 
plucked  from  the  sky;  her  nose  the  gnomen  of  Love's  dial 
that  tells  you  how  the  clock  of  your  heart  goes  "  and  so  on.  ^ 
The  overwrought  similitudes  of  the  tribe  of  sonneteers, 
master  though  he  was  himself  of  all  their  ingenious  graces, 
stung  Shakespeare  likewise  to  these  honest  words : 

My  mistress'  eyes  are  nothing  like  the  sun; 

Coral  is  far  more  red  than  her  lips'  red; 

If  snow  be  white,  why  then  her  breasts  are  dun; 

If  hairs  be  wires,  black  wires  grow  on  her  head. 

I  have  seen  roses  damask'd  red  and  white. 

But  no  such  roses  see  I  in  her  cheeks; 

And  in  some  perfumes  is  there  more  delight 

Than  in  the  breath  that  from  my  mistress  reeks.    ' 

I  love  to  hear  licr  si)eak,  yet  well  I  know 

That  music  lialli  a  far  more  pleasing  sound  ; 

I  grant  I  never  saw  a  goddess  go. 

My  mistress,  when  she  walks,  treads  on  the  ground; 

And  yet,  by  heaven,  I  think  my  love  as  rare 

As  any  she  belied  with  false  compare. 

Still,  in  aptness  of  word,  hay)piness  of  phrase,  in  beauty 
of  sentiment,  and  occasional  nobility  of  thought  it  wouhl 
be  (liffifult  to  find  anywhere,  even  with  the  two  or  three 
greatest  names  omitted,  a  body  of  lyrical  verse  llie  e(|ual 
of   tlic  Elizabethan    .sonnet.     Daniel,  Donne,  Drayton, 

•  See  Daniel,  Delia,  sonnet  xix,  and  Jonson,  Cynthia'a  ReveU,  V,  iv. 


61  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

Barnes,  Barnfield,  Lodge,  and  even  at  times  lesser  men, 
practised  the  sonnet  in  this  age  with  a  mastery  of  tech- 
nique and  a  perfection  of  expression  which  remains  the 
despair  of  our  own  metrically  less  facile  time. 

Recalling  the  poetic  fervor  of  Sidney,  the  grace  and 
beauty  of  Spenser's  Amoretti,  and  the  many  excellences 
and  felicities  of  the  minor  sonneteers,  the  master  sonnet 
sequence  of  the  age  was  of  course  Shakespeare's,  whose 
Sonnets  were  printed  in  1609,  well  after  the  fashion  had 
waned,  although  mostly  written  within  the  closing  dec- 
ade of  the  old  queen's  reign.  About  Shakespeare's  Son- 
nets, as  about  everything  else  Shakespearean,  there  has 
been  doubt,  mystery,  construction  and  demolition  of  the- 
ory, with  endless  argument,  rejoinder  and  surrejoinder. 
Theories  on  the  subject  need  little  concern  us  here;  the 
facts  are  disputed  and  most  of  the  inferences  by  some- 
one denied.  The  sonnets,  as  we  have  them,  are  made  up 
of  two  series:  the  first  and  shorter  addressed  to  a  youth 
in  a  tone  of  adulation,  unusual  in  any  age,  impossible  in 
ours;  the  second  addressed  to  a  dark  and  imperious  lady  in 
a  desperate  abandonment  to  passion.  Who  these  person- 
ages were  —  if,  indeed,  they  were  other  than  creatures  of 
that  fertile  dramatic  imagination  that  was  Shakespeare's 
—  we  really  do  not  know;  and  one  of  many  guesses  is  at 
least  as  good  as  any  other  where  evidences  are  so  slight 
and  theorizing  so  easy.  It  is  to  be  remembered  that 
among  all  men  that  have  written,  Shakespeare  most  read- 
ily could  have  achieved  that  "notable  feigning"  that 
"gives  to  airy'  nothing  a  local  habitation  and  a  name"; 


IN  THE  ENGLAND  OF  THE  TUDORS    65 

and  that  it  is  no  more  remarkable  that  he  should  have 
written  a  sequence  of  sonnets  that  throb  with  a  passion 
that  persuades  wise  men  that  they  are  autobiographical 
than  that  he  should  have  depicted,  again  and  again,  with 
equal  cogency  and  vivacity,  tales  of  passion  whose  known 
sources  assure  us  of  their  objectivity.  If  we  must  accept 
the  Sonnets  of  Shakespeare  as  a  page  from  the  history 
of  his  own  heart,  terrible  although  their  revelation,  they 
leave  no  impression  of  a  permanent  perversion  of  that 
clear  insight  into  life,  such  as  too  often  follows  an  enslave- 
ment to  sin  with  its  consequent  distortion  of  the  features 
of  good  and  evil.  No  question  in  poetry  is  more  difficult 
than  the  relations  of  artistic  expression  to  subjective 
reality,  and  on  none  is  it  easier  or  more  futile  to  dogma- 
tize, A  subjective  interpretation  of  the  Sonnets  of  Shake- 
speare is  not  demanded  by  the  facts  as  we  know  them,  by 
the  poetical  practices  of  the  time,  or  by  any  analogy  to  be 
derived  from  the  author's  life  or  from  his  dramatic  en- 
deavors. It  remains  for  us  to  give  the  greatest  interpre- 
ter of  the  passions  of  men  the  benefit  of  that  charity  which 
we  extend  to  lesser  men,  and  to  affirm  that  there  is  no- 
thing to  necessitate  an  autobiographical  interpretation 
of  these  incomparable  sonnets  of  passion.    Shakespeare's 
Sonnets  are  by  no  means  all  of  ec|ual  poetic  value;  but  the 
best,  for  depth  and  fulhicss  of  thought,  for  mastery  of 
poetical  phrase,  at  times  for  the  white  heat  of  passion  and 
perfection  of  literary  finish,  rise  above  the  erotic  j)oetry  of 
their  own  age  as  they  serve  yet  for  the  goal  and  ultimate 
exemplar  of  their  kind. 


66  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

/k^  The  lyrical  poetry  of  Shakespeare,  however,  is  not  con- 
fined to  the  sonnets,  but  recurs  again  and  again  both  in  the 
songs  of  the  plays  and  in  the  small  number  of  poems  attrib- 
uted to  him  in  The  Passionate  Pilgrim  and  in  Chester's 
Love's  Martyr.  The  range  of  Shakespeare  as  a  lyrist,  if  we 
include  the  deeper  tones  of  the  sonnets,  is  almost  that  of 
Shakespeare  the  dramatist.  Indeed,  few  moods  are  un- 
touched in  the  lyrics  of  the  plays,  which  range  from  Auto- 
lycus  with  his  balladrv^  of  the  fair  and  country-side  and 
the  snatches  of  folk-song  which  add  pathos  to  the  sad 
plight  of  Ophelia,  to  the  sea-knell  of  The  Tempest  and  the 
exquisite  funeral  song  of  Imogen.  Nor  are  the  metrical 
settings  of  Shakespeare's  lyrics  less  varied  than  the  moods 
that  they  celebrate;  and  the  form  is  always  fitted  to  the 
theme.  In  an  age  when  every  dramatist  could  turn  a 
lyric  to  serve  his  purpose,  Shakespeare  excelled  all  com- 
petitors, and  this  less  by  sheer  originality  than  by  the 
power,  equally  exemplified  in  his  dramas,  of  furnishing 
artistic  raiment  to  traditional  material.  Again  and  again 
Shakespeare  takes  some  unconsidered  trifle  of  folk-song 
and  transmutes  it  into  a  thing  of  permanent  poetic  value, 
or  works  over  some  hackneyed  theme,  giving  to  it  with  a 
new  form  a  currency  for  all  time.  In  the  lyric  as  else- 
where, it  is  not  so  much  the  possession  of  new  or  startling 
qualities  that  characterizes  the  artistic  endowment  of 
Shakespeare  as  it  is  the  superlative  degree  in  which  he  is 
endowed  with  qualities  which  are  ordinarily  associated 
with  the  sanity  of  talent  as  contrasted  with  the  ab- 
normality of  genius.   It  is  the  artistic  address,  the  natu- 


IN  THE  ENGLAND  OF  THE  TUDORS    67 

ralness  and  reasonableness  with  which  he  employs  what 
is  his  and  what  has  been  other  men's,  that  is  alike  the 
despair  of  imitation  and  analysis. 

T^ere  remains  one  lyrist,  strictly  of  the  reign  of  Eliza- 
beth, whiL-addedto  the  concert^  of  his  time  a  new  and 
ftriginal  note.  This  was  John  Dpnne,  later  the  famous 
doctor  of  divinity  and  Dean  of  St.  Paul's.  In  his_eadieiL. 
years  the  poetry  of  Donne  was  wholly  secular  and  free, 
save  for  conceits,  from  the  dbnTinant  influences  that 
characterized  his  contemporaries.  Donne,  who  was  nine 
years  j'ounger  than  Shakespeare,  enjoyed  unusual  advant- 
ages in  his  education  at  Oxford  and  in  the  private  study  of 
languages,  divinity,  and  dialectics.  Possessed  of  a  compe- 
tence, Donne  passed  his  time  as  a  gentleman  of  fashion  and 
made  an  early  reputation  as  a  wit  and  a  poet.  His  poetry, 
indeed,  seems  to  have  been  well  known  before  any  of  it 
had  appeared  in  print;  and  later  his  romantic  love-match 
and  his  call  to  the  church  years  after,  enhanced  his  reputa- 
tion for  a  kind  of  poetry  which  the  years  of  his  gravity 
and  churchmanship  would  fain  have  disavowed.  The 
lyrical  poctrj-^  of  Donne  is  to  be  found  in  his  songs  and  son- 
nets, his  divine  poems,  and  in  The  Anatomy  of  the  Worlds 
—  in  his  elegies,  his  epithalaraia,  even  to  a  certain  ex- 
tent in  his  satires  and  letters  in  verse.  Indeed,  if  we  are 
to  lay  stress  on  the  subjective  quality  of  the  lyric,  Donne 
is  lyrical  throughout.  In  the  songs  and  sonnets  Donne's 
subject  is  love,  in  which  he  api)cars  to  have  oxporimented 
in  his  youtii,  impelled  less,  we  may  believe,  by  his  pas- 
sions than  by  a  certain  curiosity  which  led  him  likewise 


C8  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

into  the  study  of  medijEval  sciences  and  into  the  byways 
of  heretical  divinity.  There  is  a  subtle  and  original  cyn- 
icism, with  all  their  passion,  about  many  of  these  love 
lyrics,  a  weird  intensity  and  abandon,  such  as  English 
poetry  had  not  known  before  Donne's  time.  But  with 
respect  to  his  cynicism  and  scepticism  as  to  human  pas- 
sion, it  is  to  be  remembered  that  no  lyrist  has  so  glorified 
the  constancy  and  devotion  of  pure  love  as  Donne,  whose 
own  life  exemplified  alike  its  beauty  and  its  glory.  In  The 
Anatomy  of  the  World  the  theme  is  death  in  its  abstract 
and  universal  significance,  despite  the  circumstance  that 
the  poem  was  undertaken  as  a  tribute  to  the  memory  of 
a  young  maiden.  Mistress  Elizabeth  Drury,  whom,  char- 
acteristically, Donne  had  never  even  so  much  as  seen. 
The  two  "Anniversaries,"  as  the  parts  are  called,  make 
this  a  sustained  poem  of  considerable  length  in  decasyl- 
labic couplets.  None  the  less,  it  would  be  difficult  to  find 
a  purer  specimen  of  the  lyric  of  intellectualized  emotion, 
sublimed  to  the  abstract. 

The  lyrical  poetry  of  Donne  is  characterized  by  several 
qualities  not  known  to  the  Renaissance  spirit  of  the 
Petrarchists,  the  pastoralists,  and  the  sonneteers.  For 
example,  he  rejects  most  of  the  poetical  furniture,  so  to 
speak,  in  the  houses  of  the  poets.^  lie  cares  nothing  for 
the  descriptive  ej)ithet.drawn  from  life  or  for  the  accepted 
poeticaLdictjonjjf  choice,  archaic,  and  euphonious  words, 
or  foT-thfi-  garniture  of  classical  story  and  allusion. 
Equally  free  is  he  from  the  slightest  interest  in  nature 
or  in  similitudes  drawn  from  nature;  while  as  to  man  in 


IN  THE  ENGLAND  OF  THE  TUDORS    69 

relation  to  man,  it  may  be  affirmed  that  Donne  is  freer 
from  any  touch  of  the  dramatic  than  any  other  poet  of  his 
time  or  perhaps  any  English  poet  of  any  other  time.   In 
place  of  all  these  things  discarded,  he  enriched  the  lyrical 
poetry  of  his  day  with  a  new  poetic  style  of  surprising  di- 
rectness, with  a  vocabulary  free  from  the  accepted  smooth- 
ness and  over-indulgence  in  figure,  and  with  a  versifica- 
tion, abrupt  and  harsh  at  times,  but  always   vigorous. 
Donne  applied  to  the  lyric  the  freedom,  in  a  word,  of  the 
best  dramatic  verse  of  his  day.    Above  all,  he  furnished 
lyrical  poetry  with  a  totally  new  order  of  metaphor,  drawn 
from  his  study  of  the  dialectics  of  divinity  and  especially 
from  the  technical  nomenclature  of  contemporary  science. 
In  the  difficult  and  often  recondite  allusions  of  Donne's 
poetry  the  literature  of  his  successors  found  a  new  and 
undiscovered  mine,  and  his  influence  became  patent  and 
widespread  in  the  lyric  almost  before  he  could  have  been 
well  aware  of  it  himself.   To  Donne,  his  total  break  with 
the  past,  his  mannerisms,  ingenious  similitudes,  even,  to 
some  extent,  his  cynicism  —  however  some  of  it  may 
have  been  an  affoctatlon  of  his  wit  —  were  genuine  and 
innate  (jualilics  of  his  genius;  in  his  imitators  they  often 
degenerated  into  sheer  mannerism  and  into  a  struggle 
after   the   ingenious   and   that  which   had   never   been 
said  before.    It  was  this  that  led,  years  after,  to  the  in- 
discriminate dubbing  of   this  whole   poetical    perversity 
by  the  title,  "  the  metaphysical  school  of  poetry."   Donne 
is  distinguisliablc  from  llic  I'elrarchists  Ihat  went  Ix-forc, 
as  he  is  distinguishable  from  the    "metaphysicals"  that 


70  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

came  after.  He  is  a  notable  poet  whose  lyrical  art  stands 
equally  in  contrast  with  the  refined  worship  of  beauty 
idealized  that  characterized  Spenser,  and  with  the  sweeter 
music  and  more  consummate  artistry  of  the  lyrical  poetry 
of  Shakespeare. 

/  In  contemplating  the  lyrical  activity  of  the  reign  of 
/Queen  Elizabeth,  a  striking  feature  is  the  general  diflFu- 
sion  of  the  gift  of  song.  Poetry  occupied  the  statesman  in 
the  hours  of  his  diversion  and  lured  the  scholar  from  his 
books;  it  solaced  the  prisoner  in  his  cell  and  quickened  the 
devotions  of  the  churchman  and  the  martyr.  Nobles  and 
councilors  of  state,  such  as  Oxford  and  Essex,  courtiers  like 
Sidney  and  Raleigh,  shared  this  gift  with  the  play wrights, 
pamphleteers,  and  musicians,  with  Dekker,  Greene, 
Nash,  Dowland,  Campion,  and  lesser  men.  Indeed,  to 
few  among  the  greater  poets  of  the  day  was  the  gift  of 
song  denied;  and  effort,  in  even  the  least,  not  infrequently 
achieved  success.  Greville,  pondering  on  philosophi- 
cal statecraft;  Daniel  and  Drayton,  engaged  in  turning 
English  history  into  verse,  the  latter  for  years  bending 
his  poetical  talents  to  the  topographical  glorification  of 
every  hill  and  stream  of  his  beloved  country;  Chapman, 
laborious  translator  and  dramatist,  poet  of  difficult  epi- 
cedes  and  occasional  verses  —  each  could  write  a  lyric 
with  admirable  success,  though  Chapman,  for  the  most 
part,  stood  aloof  from  so  trivial  an  employment  of  the 
divine  gift  of  poetry.  To  say  nothing  of  the  fine  mass  of 
anonymous  verse  to  be  found  in  almost  any  lyrical  antho- 
logy of  the  time,  the  ordinarily  uninspired,  who  toiled 


I 


IN  THE  ENGLAND  OF  THE  TUDORS    71 

with  pedestrian  muse  along  the  trodden  highways  of  con- 
temporary literary  production,  were  visited  at  times  by 
genuine  inspiration  and  reached,  each  beyond  himself,  to 
excellence.  Thus  Joshua  Sylvester,  devoted  translator  of 
him  whom  the  age  called  "the  divine  Du  Bartas,"  wrote 
one  sonnet,  "Were  I  as  base  as  is  the  lowly  plain,"  which 
is  worth  all  his  religious  epical  labors;  Samuel  Rowlands, 
hack-pamphleteer,  is  author  of  a  charming  lullaby;  and 
many  a  name,  otherwise  unknown,  is  memorable  for  a 
single  poem.  On  the  other  hand,  not  less  striking  is  the 
range  of  topic  included  in  this  remarkable  body  of  verse. 
Of  the  erotic  lyric  with  its  myriad  changes  of  mood  we 
have  heard,  and  of  hymn  and  song  uplifted  to  the  expres- 
sion of  religious  emotion.  But  Dekker  sang,  with  a  music 
all  but  perfect,  of  vice  and  virtue  as  the  world  rates  them, 
and  of  that  "sweet  content"  which  his  life  of  incessant 
care  and  sorrow  could  so  little  have  known.  It  was  Nash, 
master  that  he  was  of  the  vituperative  journalism  of  the 
pamphlet,  who  sang  now  blithely  of  the  springtime  in  Lon- 
don streets,  now  in  terms  funereal  of  that  terrible  visitant, 
the  plague  that  depopulated  the  city  and  drove  thousands 
into  exile.  And  it  was  Drayton,  about  the  close  of  the 
reign,  who  epitomized  the  national  pride  and  patriotism 
that  had  begotten  the  splendid  line  of  the  chronide 
plays  on  the  deeds  of  English  kings,  in  the  fine  martial 
"Ode"  on  the  Battle  of  Agincourt  wherein  we  hear  the 
very  tread  of  armies.  And  yet  this  variety  of  subject, 
form,  and  treatment,  with  all  its  ingoniousness  and  origi- 
nality at  times,  is  often  marred  by  ineciuality  in  execution. 


72  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

a  tendency  on  the  part  of  the  minor  poets  to  a  reitera- 
tion of  thought  and  figure,  and  to  a  highly  conventional- 
ized diction.  This  literature  has  been  called  a  literature 
of  great  impact;  and  it  must  be  confessed  that  again  and 
again  we  find  a  splendid  opening  or  a  perfect  initial 
stanza  spoiled  by  flagging  efi'ort,  overdone  or  negligently 
sliglited  to  an  inadequate  conclusion.  But  this  was  to 
be  anticipated  in  the  poetrj'  of  a  vigorous  and  imagina- 
tive adolescence;  and,  when  all  is  said,  it  is  amazing  to 
what  an  extent  the  lyrical  poetry  of  this  age  remains 
vital  and  fraught  with  a  poetic  message  as  sure,  as  pre- 
cious, and  as  fruitful  as  when  it  sprang  from  the  hearts 
and  brains  of  its  ardent  and  buoyant  creators. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE    LYRIC    IN    THE    REIGNS    OF    THE    FIRST    TWO    STUART 
MONARCHS 

HE  conditions  that  made  the  lyric  of  the  latter 
years  of  Elizabeth  what  it  was  continued  into 
the  reign  of  King  James,  although  the  pasto- 
ral lyric,  save  for  some  reminiscences  of  poets 
such  as  Drayton  and  Browne  of  Tavistock,  was  now 
definitely  a  thing  of  the  past,  and  no  sequence  of  sonnets 
of  any  importance  (if  we  except  those  of  two  belated 
Scotchmen,  Drummond  and  Stirling)  dates  later  in  compo- 
sition than  1600.  The  song-books,  however,  continued  in 
ever  increasing  popularity,  and  among  the  musicians  who 
were  also  their  own  poets  in  these  dainty  products  of  the 
wedded  arts,  Thomas  Campion  appeared,  the  most  suc- 
cessful writer  of  songs  of  his  age.  Campion,  like  his  tute- 
larj'  god  Apollo,  combined  with  his  lyrical  art  and  music, 
repute  as  a  physician  as  well.  He  had  written  a  successful 
work  on  counterpoint  and  had  fired  a  last  gun  in  favor  of 
classical  versification  applied  to  English  poetry.  With  the 
inconsistency  of  a  true  artist  he  now  demonstrated  his 
ability  to  write  charmingly  in  the  usually  accepted  Eng- 
lish lyrical  measures,  exhibiting  a  lightness  of  touch  and 
a  metrical  competency  that  place  him  first  among  the 
lyrists  of  his  {)articular  class.    Campion  seems  more  the 


74  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC, 

disciple  of  Catullus  and  Anacreon  and  less  an  imitator  of 
Petrarch  and  the  French  and  Italian  Petrarchists  than 
most  of  his  brethren.  He  is  neither  deep  nor  troubled 
with  questionings  even  in  his  sweet  and  grave  poems  that 
treat  of  religious  themes.  While  not  a  mere  hedonist, 
from  being  which,  with  its  often  attendant  grossness. 
Campion's  delicate  taste  preserves  him,  his  sentiments 
are  always  those  of  a  lover  and  worshipper  of  beauty, 
however  he  may  breathe  in  with  his  enjoyment  thereof 
the  sense  of  its  fragility  and  vanity.  In  Campion,  as  was 
to  be  expected,  the  words  are  always  put  together  with  a 
sense  of  their  value  in  song;  and  his  Airs,  of  which  he 
produced  no  less  than  four  books  up  to  1619,  display  an 
equal  recognition  of  the  art  of  song  in  its  verbal  applica- 
tions. As  we  turn  over  the  song-books  of  Campion's  many 
imitators  and  rivals,  we  meet  with  the  names  of  Dowland, 
Weelkes,  Hume,  Bateson,  Robert  Jones,  and  many  more. 
John  Dowland  was  a  lutenist,  famous  at  home  and  abroad, 
an  artist  who  betrayed  those  mixed  traits  of  the  artistic 
temperament  which  are  so  trying  at  times  to  the  less 
gifted.  Of  Hume  all  we  know  is  that  he  is  described  as  a 
captain;  of  Jones  only  that  several  of  the  lyrics  of  his  song- 
books  are  of  unusual  loveliness.  To  what  extent  these 
cultivated  musicians  were  their  own  poets,  as  certainly 
was  true  of  Campion,  we  are  not  definitely  informed. 
Among  the  poets  of  the  early  days  of  James  who  achieved 
for  themselves  success  was  William  Drummond,  the  Scot- 
tish friend  of  Jonson,  whose  lyrical  verse  was  collected 
and  published  in  1616,  the  year  of  the  death  of  Shake- 


UNDER  THE  FIRST  TWO  STUARTS  75 

speare,  Drummond  is  a  belated  Petrarchist  and  follower 
of  Sidney  and  the  sonneteers.  He  exhibits  a  certain  in- 
genuity and  poetical  aptness  of  his  own  alike  in  subject 
and  figure,  but  maintains  the  old-fashioned  Italian  forms 
of  verse,  being  indeed  the  last  writer  of  note  to  employ 
the  madrigal.  Drummond  is  often  happily  effective,  if 
never  really  great.  A  lesser  poet  and  even  more  purely 
imitative  was  Sir  William  Alexander  of  Menstrie,  later 
Earl  of  Stirling,  another  Scotchman  to  follow  in  the  wake 
of  English  lyrical  fashion.  His  Aurora,  a  series  of  sonnets 
interspersed  with  songs  and  elegies,  of  uncertain  date  of 
writing,  was  first  published  in  1604,  Stirling  came  too 
late  and  wrote  too  much.  Many  things  are  good  in  him; 
more,  perhaps,  than  the  casual  reader  might  be  likely  to 
discover.  Of  Sir  Robert  Ayton,  a  third  Scottish  poet, 
secretary  to  the  queen  of  King  James,  Anne  of  Denmark, 
one  lyric  ("I  do  confess  thou 'rt  smooth  and  fair")  is 
generally  known.  Ayton  has  further  been  reputed  (among 
several)  the  author  of  the  original  of  "Auld  Lang  Syne." 
However  the  rediscovery  of  ancient  literature  and  art 
may  have  kindled  the  imagination  of  the  Renaissance, 
the  practice  of  Renaissance  poets  had,  least  of  all  things 
in  it,  the  qualities  of  repose,  design,  and  finish.  Feeling 
and  passion,  the  beau  I  y  of  the  world,  and  the  glory  and 
radiance  of  that  physical  beauty,  these  were  their  themes, 
and  their  si)irit  rode  lightly  the  crest  of  the  wave  of  the 
present,  looking  neither  before  nor  after.  Even  where 
there  is  a  largo  show  of  design,  as  in  The  Farri/  Qurc7i,  and 
as  serious  and  godly  an  intention  as  ever  (juickcned  the 


7G  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

dreams  of  a  poet,  we  feel  that  much  of  this  is  futile  and 
that  the  real  preoccupation  of  this  exquisite  artificer  in 
words  is  in  the  delicate  and  beautiful  details  of  the  mo- 
ment in  which  his  wider  purposes  are  only  too  often  ob- 
scured if  not  totally  lost.  In  short,  the  Spenserian  cult  of 
beauty,  which  well  typifies  the  lesser  ideals  of  the  minor 
poets  who  were  Spenser's  contemporaries,  is  illustrated  in 
this  attitude  of  the  devotee  at  beauty's  altar  rather  than 
by  that  of  the  student  of  beauty's  laws.  Elaborate,  pic- 
torial is  this  art,  subdued  to  the  melody  of  words  and  to 
the  delights  of  the  senses;  diffuse,  ornate,  and  enamored 
of  the  iridescence  of  change  and  of  the  grace  of  stately 
motion;  but  careless  whither  it  go  or  if  the  resulting  narra- 
tive, description,  or  emotion  in  any  wise  justify  its  devious 
wanderings.  This  is  why  the  Spenserians  and  their  kind 
among  the  lyrists  often  know  not  when  to  hold  the  hand, 
entranced  with  their  gentle  task;  why  their  figures  of 
speech  are  lines  too  prolonged,  their  poems,  stanzas  in 
overplus,  and  their  whole  art  weighted  at  times  with  the 
gauds  and  jewels  of  elaborate  artistry  to  the  disorder  of 
the  pattern  or  design.  It  was  Donne's  consciousness  of 
all  this  that  caused  him  (as  we  have  seen),  in  the  nine- 
ties, to  discard  the  hallowed  mannerisms  of  pastoralists 
and  sonneteers.  And  in  discarding  these  superficialities 
of  style,  he  discarded  their  superficialities  of  thought, 
substituting  the  actual  experiences  and  emotions  of  his 
strange  personality,  clothed  in  the  stranger  garb  of  illus- 
tration dra-vvn  from  contemporary  abstractions  of  scien- 
tific and  philosophic  thought.   Ben  Jonson,  in  his  lyrical 


UNDER  THE  FIRST  TWO  STU-\RTS  77 

poetry  a  little  later,  took  up  a  contrasted  position  of  criti- 
cism towards  the  conventional  lyric  of  the  moment,  a 
position  not  unlike  his  professional  attitude  towards  the 
amateurish  spirit  of  much  of  the  drama  contemporaneous. 
Ten  years  the  junior  of  Shakespeare,  twenty  years  younger 
than  Spenser,  Jonson  combined  a  conservative  temper 
with  a  classical  education,  less  unusual  in  his  day  for  its 
thoroughness  than  for  the  practical  applications  that  he 
made  of  it  as  a  poet,  dramatist,  and  critic.  To  describe 
Jonson  as  a  man  preposterously  reactionary  and  believing 
that  in  the  ancients  alone  can  the  modern  world  find  its 
guide  in  philosophy  and  in  the  arts,  is  to  misread  alike 
his  general  practice  and  his  theory  explicitly  laid  down. 
Not  only  did  he  know  his  classics  and  carry  his  knowledge 
with  an  ease  acquired  by  few  scholars,  but  he  understood, 
too,  the  conditions  of  the  modern  world  and  believed  that 
literature  in  England  could  find  progress  and  perfection 
only  in  a  development  distinctly  modern  and  English. 
Jonson  recognized,  however,  that  the  ancients  had  again 
and  again  set  an  example  and  reached  a  success  in  certain 
forms  of  literature  which  it  was  well  for  the  modern  world 
to  know  and,  if  possible,  to  emulate.  There  was  an  estab- 
lished way  of  writing  the  epigram,  for  example,  the  satire, 
and  the  lyric,  which  Martial,  Juvenal,  Horace,  and  Catul- 
lus knew  and  practised,  each  in  his  own  manner.  Without 
merely  imitating,  and  in  no  wise  attempting  exotic  verses 
(which  Jonson's  good  sense  reprobated),  why  should  not 
English  jKM'trv'  profit  by  such  models  an<l  cease  to  do  igno- 
rantly  andainaU'urislily  wlial  luul  already  been  established 


78  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

so  well  by  the  best  literary  craft?  It  is  impossible  not  to 
sympathize  with  Jonson's  point  of  view  when  wc  take  into 
consideration,  not  those  happy  specimens  of  our  literature 
that  triumphed  over  the  unstable  ideals  of  merely  roman- 
tic art,  but  the  average  wanderings  of  untrained  talent 
and  the  slipshod  art  that  compels  us  to  rate  so  many  of 
the  Elizabethans  with  allowances  for  their  inequality  and 
grant  them  a  qualified  fame,  preserved  in  the  herbariums 
of  the  anthologies. 

As  we  turn  from  the  theory  of  Jonson  to  his  practice  of 
the  lyric,  we  recognize  the  loss  in  spontaneity  and  natural- 
ness which  art  conforming  to  preconceived  standards 
must  always  suffer.  Jonson's  best  lyrics  are  finished  and 
informed  with  a  sense  of  design;  the  idea  is  often  both 
happy  and  novel,  and  carried  out  with  artistic  logic  and 
insistent  completeness.  Metrically  felicitous,  impeccable 
in  diction,  possessed  of  grace,  and  at  times  even  of  light- 
ness, there  is  none  the  less  about  the  Jonsonian  lyric  a 
certain  stiffness  and  artifice  from  which  many  lyrists  of 
half  his  note,  some  of  them  his  disciples,  are  happily  free. 
Again  and  again,  too,  Jonson's  lyrics  trespass  in  their 
point  and  wit  on  the  domain  of  the  epigram,  in  which 
their  author  stands  the  acknowledged  master  of  his  time. 
The  famous  "Drink  to  me  only  with  thine  eyes,"  is  of  the 
essence  of  the  epigram  of  compliment,  and  the  fine  con- 
trast of  "Still  to  be  neat,  still  to  be  drest"  is  of  much  the 
same  quality,  despite  the  lyrical  outburst  of  the  second 
stanza  which  sinks  again  with  the  last  lines  to  a  rational- 
ized statement. 


UNDER  THE  FIRST  TWO  STUARTS  79 

Give  me  a  look,  give  me  a  face. 

That  makes  simplicity  a  grace; 

Robes  loosely  flowing,  hair  as  free: 

Such  sweet  neglect  more  taketh  me 

Than  all  th'  adulteries  of  art; 

They  strike  mine  eyes,  but  not  my  heart. 

There  is  no  tenderer  little  poem  in  the  language  than 
Jonson's  "Epitaph  on  Salathiel  Pavy,  a  child  of  Queen 
Elizabeth's  chapel,"  who  died  when  "years  he  numbered 
scarce  thirteen,"  already  famed  as  "the  stage's  jewel." 
At  the  other  extreme,  Jonson's  lyrics  touch  and  overlap 
that  debatable  region,  the  didactic,  offering  in  poems  such 
as  the  noble  "  Epode,"  "  Not  to  know  vice  at  all,"  or  in  the 
"Ode  to  the  Memory  of  Sir  Lucius  Gary  and  Sir  Henry 
Morison,"  the  best  possible  examples  to  those  who  would 
include  intellectualizcd  sentiment  in  the  spacious  domain 
of  lyrical  poetry. 

It  is  not  growing  like  a  tree 

In  bulk,  cloth  make  man  better  be; 
Or  standing  long  an  oak,  throe  hundred  year. 
To  fall  a  log  at  last,  dry,  bald,  and  sere: 
A  lily  of  a  day 
Is  fairer  far  in  May, 
Although  it  fall  and  die  that  night; 
It  was  the  plant  and  flower  of  light. 
In  small  proportions  we  just  beauties  see; 
And  in  short  measures,  life  may  perfect  be. 

It  is  in  such  passages  as  these  (from  the  "Ode"  ju.st  men- 
tioned) that  we  find  Jonson  poetically  at  his  best;  tiiough 
there  are  few  provinces  in  general  litcnilurc  thai  his  re- 
doubtable energy  did  not  essay  to  conquer  for  his  own. 


80  TIIE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

Jonson's  lyrical  poetry  is  contained  in  the  sections  of  the 
folio  of  1642  entitled  "The  Forest"  and  "Underwoods." 
His  plays,  and  the  masques  in  particular,  yield  many 
other  examples  of  admirable  poetry;  but  the  songs  of  the 
masques,  lyrical  though  they  are,  from  their  adaptation 
to  the  context  and  the  special  occasion,  seldom  bear 
excision  from  their  places. 

It  would  be  rash  to  affirm  that  Jonson  gave  form  to  the 
English  lyric,  recalling,  as  we  must,  the  metrical  experi- 
ments from  Wyatt  to  Sidney  and  Watson,  the  successes 
of  the  pastoralists,  the  sonneteers,  and  the  poets  who  wrote 
lyrics  to  be  set  to  music.  Even  Donne,  anathematized  as 
he  was  by  Jonson  for  not  keeping  the  regular  tread  of  his 
measure,  and  misjudged  by  the  precisians  ever  since,  was 
often  peculiarly  happy  in  the  choice  of  his  stanzas  and  in 
the  invention  of  new  stanzaic  forms.  ^  And  yet  a  con- 
sciousness comes  into  English  lyrical  art  with  Jonson,  not 
recognizable  before;  for  Jonson,  in  a  sense,  is  the  father  of 
those  light  and  pleasing  applications  of  poetry  to  the  situ- 
ations and  predicaments  of  cultivated  life,  the  epigram, 
the  epitaph  (when  not  too  solemn),  occasional  verse  in  its 
thousand  applications,  to  which  was  later  to  be  given  the 
title  vers  de  societe  ;  precisely  as  Jonson,  in  a  larger  sphere 
than  that  of  any  one  form  of  his  literary  art,  is  the  centre 
from  which  emanated  the  restrictive  spirit  in  reaction 
against  the  artistic  excesses  of  the  Renaissance,  the  influ- 
ence which,  working  through  his  imitators  and  disciples 

1  See,  for  exam])le,  W.  F.  Melton,  The  Rhetoric  oj  John  Donne't 
Verse.  Baltimore,  1906. 


UNDER  THE  FIRST  TWO  STUARTS  81 

in  ever  widening  circles,  triumphed  at  the  Restoration, 
and,  if  it  silenced  the  poetry  of  the  imagination  for  a  time, 
wrought  its  good  to  the  rational  and  critical  literature  of 
our  tongue. 

But  this  new  restrictive  force  in  poetry  was  little  felt 
in  the  earlier  years  of  King  James,  with  Daniel,  despite  a 
certain  classical  taste  and  reserve,  writing  lyrics  in  the 
approved  Renaissance  manner,  and  Drayton  continuing 
the  Spenserian  pastoral.  Indeed,  the  spirit  of  Spenser 
continued  for  years  the  most  potent  influence  on  poetry, 
inspiring  alike  the  sacred  and  the  profane  allegory  of 
Giles  and  Phineas  Fletcher,  the  chorographical  labors 
of  Drayton  upon  his  Polyolbion,  besides  his  pastorals,  and 
those  of  a  new  group  of  younger  poets,  William  Browne  of 
Tavistock,  George  Wither,  the  recently  discovered  William 
Basse,  and  Christopher  Brooke.  This  school  was  essen- 
tially narrative,  allegorical,  and  diffuse,  and  given  to  the 
cult  of  nature  in  her  gentler  aspects.  There  was  not  much 
place  for  the  lyric  among  them;  and  yet  Giles  Fletcher 
the  Younger  in  his  Christ's  Victory  and  Triumph  reached 
excellence  in  one  song  at  least,  the  one  beginning  "Love 
is  the  blossom  where  there  blows,"  and  his  brother 
Phineas  again  and  again  sustains  the  intricate  allegories 
of  The  Purple  Island  with  flights  of  truly  lyrical  quality 
and  beauty.  As  to  the  later  i)asl()ralisls,  just  mentioned, 
Browne  wrote  charming  lyrics  in  his  Britannia's  Pastorals, 
in  his  one  masque,  and  elsewhere;  whilst  Wither,  in  Fidelia, 
1G15,  and  PhilaretCylOl^,  reveah'd  a  copious  imagery  de- 
voted to  the  cult  of  beauty,  a  ready  verse,  and  a  fluency 


82  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

of  poetic  diction,  quite  amazing  in  the  author  of  the  bald 
religious  verse  that  we  have  at  his  hands  and  the  satirical 
and  controversial  Puritanism  of  other  specimens  of  his 
work.  Neither  Basse  nor  Brooke  is  memorable  save  for 
his  association  with  greater  men.  Commendatory  verses 
of  the  former  precede  the  first  folio  of  Shakespeare's 
plays;  Christopher  Brooke  was  the  friend  of  Donne. 

If  we  turn  now  once  more  to  "the  sons  of  Ben"  and  to 
the  disciples  of  Donne,  we  find  both  traceable,  with  cer- 
tain interminglings,  especially  in  the  lyric  and  its  kindred 
form,  the  epigram,  throughout  the  age  and  quite  to  the 
Restoration.  Thus  BrowTie  himself,  with  all  his  Spenser, 
wrote  epigrams  of  so  truly  Jonsonian  a  model  that  one 
of  them,  the  famous  "Epitaph  on  the  Countess  of  Pem- 
broke," "Sidney's  sister,  Pembroke's  mother,"  has  been 
time  out  of  mind  erroneously  attributed  to  Jonson.^ 
'  This  famous  epitaph  was  first  published  in  Osborne's  Traditional 
Memoirs  of  the  Reign  of  King  James,  1658,  p.  78,  and  also  included  in 
the  Poems  of  the  countess's  son,  William  Earl  of  Pembroke,  and  Sir 
Benjamin  Rudyerd  in  1660,  p.  66;  but  "in  neither  volume  is  there  any 
indication  of  authorship."  Jonson's  claim  to  it  rests  solely  on  Whalley, 
the  editor  of  the  first  critical  edition  of  Jonson,  who  alleges  a  tradition 
to  the  effect  that  Jonson  wrote  it,  but  offers  no  proof  or  reference.  On 
the  other  hand,  in  Aubrey's  Memoirs  of  Natural  Remarks  on  Wilts  (ed. 
Britton,  1847,  p.  90),  thecpigramis  said  to  have  been  "made  by  Mr. 
William  Browne  who  wrote  the  Pastorals"  {Notes  and  Queries,  Ser.  i,  iii, 
262) ;  and  Mr.  Goodwin,  the  most  recent  editor  of  Browne,  quotes  the 
following  lines  from  this  poet's  Elegy  on  Charles  I^rd  Herbert,  a  grandson 
of  the  countess,  to  show  that  Browne  himself  alludes  to  his  authorship  of 
the  epigram.  The  passage  runs : 

And  since  my  weak  and  saddest  verse 

Was  worthy  thought  to  grace  thy  grandam's  hearse, 

Accept  of  this. 


I 


UNDER  THE  FIRST  TWO  STUARTS  83 

Richard  Brome,  Jonson's  body  servant,  lit  his  slender 
lyrical  flame,  like  the  torch  of  his  abler  comedies,  at  the 
altar  of  Jonson;  whilst  Cartwright,  Randolph,  and  even 
Waller,  with  many  lesser  men,  might  claim  the  same  august 
kinship,  if  not  by  genius,  at  least  by  adoption.  Of  Carew 
and  Herrick,  truest  of  "the  sons  of  Ben,"  we  shall  hear 
more  below.  As  to  Donne,  his  influence,  from  the  postur- 
ing and  effort  which  it  frequently  begot  m  his  imitators, 
is  even  more  readily  discernible,  prompting  alike  the  cyni- 
cal note  of  some  of  Beaumont's  lyrics,  such  ingenuities 
perhaps  as  Jonson's  own  "Hour-Glass"  and  his  humorous 
contention  that  "Women  are  but  Men's  Shadows,"  and 
leading  on,  as  we  shall  see,  to  the  contortions  of  Quarlcs, 
the  transfigured  conceits  of  Herbert,  the  confusions  of 
Crashaw,  and  the  veritably  "metaphysical  poetry"  of 
Cowley. 

The  old  drama  from  the  first  furnished  many  oppor- 
tunities for  the  writing  of  incidental  lyrics,  and  there  is 
scarcely  a  playwright  of  average  reputation  who  has  not 
contributed  his  lyrical  poetrj'  to  the  general  flood  of  song. 
Of  Shakespeare's  superlative  gift  in  this  kind,  note  has 
already  been  taken;  of  Marlowe's  single,  perfect  little  pas- 
toral lyric,  and  of  Dekker's  songs,  so  choice  and  so  few. 
Tliomas  Tloy wood  possessed  an  almost  equally  clear  run- 
nel of  song,  in  which  we  catch  at  times  a  sense  for  nature, 
premonitory  of  things  afar  off  to  come;  while  in  Webster's 
two  "Dirges,"  contributed,  one  to  each  of  the  two  over- 
powering tragedies  that  have  made  his  name  immortAl, 
we  have  an  atmosphere  of  weird  terror  equalled  only  in 


Si  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

the  grotesque  lyricism  of  the  witches  of  Macbeth.  Next 
to  Shakespeare  among  his  successors,  John  Fletcher  could 
best  turn  a  lyric;  indeed,  so  much  is  his  art  in  this  respect 
like  Shakespeare's  later  manner  that  it  is  not  to  be  won- 
dered that  authorship  has  been  made  a  matter  of  question 
in  the  beautiful  "Bridal  Song"  in  The  Two  Noble  Kins- 
men. Fletcher's  range  is  only  less  than  Shakespeare's,  as 
his  lyrics  incidental  to  his  plays  are  fewer  in  number. 
Fletcher  hesitates  not  to  take  an  old  subject  and  find  new 
pretty  things  to  say  on  the  endless  theme  "what  is  love? " 
or  to  conclude  the  series  of  a  hackneyed  tournament  son- 
net on  "Care-Charmer  Sleep"  with  a  new  treatment, 
nothing  inferior.  His  "God  Lyseus  ever  young"  deserves 
a  place  beside  Jonson's  "Queen  and  huntress  chaste  and 
fair  "  or  Shakespeare's  "  Plumpy  Bacchus  with  pink  eyne  " ; 
and  it  was  doubtless  to  Fletcher's  fine  lines  on  melancholy, 
"Hence  all  you  vain  delights,"  with  their  perfect  pre- 
servation of  the  single  grey  tone,  that  Milton,  a  careful 
student  of  the  older  poets,  owed  at  least  the  design  of  his 
"II  Penseroso."  Scarcely  less  happy  than  the  lyrics  of 
Fletcher  are  those  of  his  coadjutor  Beaumont,  so  far  as 
the  two  can  be  separated.  We  have  noted  the  tone  of 
cynicism  in  Beaumont,  which  he  may  have  had  of  Donne, 

as  where  he  sings 

Never  more  will  I  protest 
To  love  a  woman  but  in  jest. 

On  the  other  hand,  in  finish,  if  not  in  a  certain  stiffness, 
and  occasionally  in  weight  of  subject-matter,  Beaumont  is 
no  unworthy  son  of  Ben.    Such  especially  is  the  quality 


UNDER  THE  FIRST  TWO  STUARTS  85 

of  the  lines  "On  the  Tombs  in  Westminster  Abbey," 
earliest  of  a  series  of  poems  on  this  topic  and  exemplifying 
a  new  note  in  the  lyric,  that  of  melancholy  reminiscence 
suggested  by  a  monument  of  past  glory.  Nor  did  the 
general  lyrical  facility  fail  even  the  later  dramatists. 
Massinger,  Ford,  Randolph,  and  especially  Shirley,  all 
were  writers  of  successful  songs  and  quotable  even  in  a 
select  anthology  of  the  lyrics  of  their  time. 

The  masques,  which  flourished  in  increasingly  expensive 
glory  throughout  the  reigns  of  King  James  and  Charles  I, 
are  full  of  lyrical  poetry;  and  of  this  domain  Ben  Jonson 
is  the  recognized  potentate,  giving  laws  with  dogmatic 
certainty  informed,  however,  with  consummate  taste  and 
a  true  love  of  poetrJ^  Daniel,  Campion,  Beaumont,  Chap- 
man, Browne,  all  were  competitors  of  Jonson  in  the 
masque,  and  all  have  left  in  this  work  of  theirs  admirable 
specimens  of  their  lyrical  art.  Unhappily,  the  very  per- 
fection of  the  adaptability  of  poetry  such  as  this  to  the 
purpose  in  hand  often  deprives  it  of  that  permanency  to 
which  its  merits  would  otherwise  entitle  it.  Still,  it  is  not 
impossible  to  cull  many  a  poem  of  indestructible  beauty 
from  among  the  forgotten  glories  of  these  sumptuous 
vanities  of  times  gone  by.  Possibly  the  most  permanent 
are  the  cj)itli;ilaiiiia  or  bridal  songs,  for  the  mastiuc  was 
often  employed  to  grace  the  festivities  of  noble  nuptials. 
Of  applied  lyrics  of  this  kind  (to  go  back  for  the  nonce), 
none  are  nobler  than  the  famous  "Prothalamion"  and 
"Epithalamion"  of  Spenser,  the  former  written  for  the 
joint  marriage  of  two  noble  ladies,  daughters  of  the  Earl 


86  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

of  Worcester,  the  latter,  the  poet's  own  ecstatic  marriage 
song.  Neither  of  these  formed  part  of  a  masque,  nor  did 
Chapman's  "  Epithalamion  Teratos,"  the  effective  lyric 
which  he  employed  for  the  celebration  of  a  marriage  in  his 
completion  of  Marlowe's  Hero  and  Leander.  But  it  was 
poems  such  as  these  that  offered  Jonson  and  the  writers 
of  masques  models  for  their  subsequent  work.  There 
are  few  finer  epithalamia  than  Jonson's  which  concludes 
the  masque  that  Gifford  picturesquely  dubbed  The  Hue 
and  Cry  after  Cupid,  with  its  sonorous  refrain,  "Shine, 
Hesperus,  shine  forth,  thou  wished  star."  The  foremost 
writer  of  masques  in  the  time  of  King  Charles  was  James 
Shirley,  notable,  too,  as  one  of  the  great  dramatists  of  his 
age.  The  lyrics  of  Shirley,  which  are  often  exquisite  and 
deeper  than  surface  thought  and  catching  charm,  are 
confined  neither  to  his  dramas  nor  his  masques,  but  were 
collected  by  their  author  in  a  volume,  published  in  1646, 
in  which  he  claims  several  fugitive  poems  already  in  print 
and  attributed  to  other  men.  Despite  the  confusion  of 
Shirley's  lighter  muse  with  that  of  Herrick  and  Carew,  his 
is  the  larger  utterance  of  earlier  days;  and  so,  to  a  cer- 
tain extent,  likewise,  is  Habington's,  who  in  his  sonnet 
sequence  to  Castara,  1634-1040,  practised  that  now  old- 
fashioned  form  almost  for  the  last  time,  until  it  was  re- 
vived, first  by  Charlotte  Smith  and  Bowles  in  the  latter 
decades  of  the  eighteenth  century,  and  later  with  renewed 
vigor  and  poetical  success  by  Rossetti  and  Mrs.  Browning 
in  Victorian  days. 
Analogies  frequently  mislead  and  disprove  what  they 


UNDER  THE  FIRST  TWO  STUARTS  87 

are  invoked  to  illustrate;  and  yet  the  often-repeated  com- 
parison of  the  reign  of  Elizabeth  to  the  spring,  the  period 
of  peculiar  and  rapid  quickening,  the  time  of  bloom  and 
promise,  is  as  useful  as  it  is  obvious  and  hackneyed.  In 
such  an  age  poetry  is  careless  in  form  and  subject  as  we 
have  seen,  more  intent  on  saying  many  things  than  cau- 
tious in  selection;  and  the  moral  significance  of  art  with 
questions  of  its  mission  are  things  little  thought  on,  and, 
even  if  considered,  carelessly  neglected.  There  was  vice 
and  sin  in  these  old  days,  and  there  were  serious-minded 
men  who  deplored  it;  but,  although  the  forces  of  disin- 
tegration were  already  at  work,  there  was  as  yet  no  open 
break  between  the  cult  of  beauty  and  the  spirit  of  holiness. 
With  the  accession  of  King  James  a  change  came  over  the 
English  world.  First,  the  national  spirit  fell  slack,  with  a 
foreigner  come  to  the  throne.  As  a  consequence  Puritan- 
ism, with  its  dangerous  political  aspirations,  began  to 
kindle,  fanned  by  the  fitful  unwisdom  of  the  king  and 
his  preoccupations  pedantic  and  unkingly.  The  frivolous 
became  more  frivolous  with  their  masques,  revels,  and 
costly  entertainments,  and  royalty  led  the  rout  of  folly; 
while  the  prudent,  grave,  and  God-fearing  felt  themselves 
gradually  alienated  from  much  which  they  had  hitherto 
been  able  to  accept  without  question  or  cavil.  The  arts, 
and  particularly  the  stage,  sufTorcd  in  this  cleavage  be- 
tween the  pursuits  of  j)leasure  and  the  dictates  of  morals. 
But  to  speak  of  Puritanism  in  its  more  inclusive  sense, 
as  wholly  inimical  to  portry,  is  totally  to  niisrcpn'scnt 
the  truth.   The  history  of  the  sacred  lyric  alone,  in  the 


88  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

reign  of  James  <and  Charles,  with  its  splendid  dedication 
to  the  worship  and  glory  of  God,  whether  the  devotee 
were  Anglican,  Puritan,  or  Roman,  is  enough  to  disprove 
so  gross  a  misrepresentation.  This  however  must  be  con- 
fessed, the  poets  now  chose  between  earthly  and  divine 
love  or  lived  in  later  regret  for  their  celebration  of  the 
former.  Amor,  Venus,  and  the  rest  were  now  felt  verily 
to  be  gods  of  the  heathen,  to  be  sung  with  apologies  if  not 
with  shame;  and  song,  like  other  good  gifts  of  the  world, 
was  enlisted  in  the  services  of  virtue  and  godliness. 

As  a  result  of  this  split  between  the  sacred  and  the 
secular  world  in  poetry  as  elsewhere,  the  age  of  King 
Charles  I  produced  the  purest  of  our  poetical  worshippers 
of  beauty  as  it  produced  the  most  saintly  and  rhapsodic 
of  English  devotional  poets.  Among  the  former  Carew 
and  Herrick  stand  preeminent,  alike  in  their  general 
characteristics  and  in  the  delicacy  and  perfection  of  their 
workmanship,  but  contrasted  in  many  other  things. 
Thomas  Carew  is  described  as  an  indolent  student  while 
at  Oxford,  a  diplomat  of  modest  success,  later  promoted 
to  a  close  attendance  on  King  Charles  as  the  royal  cup- 
bearer. He  wrote,  like  a  gentleman,  for  his  pleasure  and 
that  of  his  immediate  friends,  and  his  poetry  came  into 
print  only  after  his  death  and  after  the  passing  of  the 
immediate  experiences  that  occasioned  it.  Carew  was 
devoid  of  Jonson's  scholarship  as  he  was  devoid  of  Jon- 
son's  show  of  it;  but  his  learning  was  adequate  and,  if 
worn  negligently,  was  always  in  the  height  of  the  contem- 
porary mode.    But  neither  the  form  nor  the  thought  of 


UNDER  THE  FIRST  TWO  STUARTS  89 

Carew's  lyrics  is  ever  negligent.  Here  he  is  strict  as  Jonson 
himself,  and  far  more  easy.  Carew  seldom  trespasses 
on  serious  or  important  subjects,  dwelling  preferably  in 
the  world  of  compliment,  polite  love-making,  pointed 
repartee,  and  sentiment  only  half  serious.  And  yet  Carew 
is  a  very  genuine  poet,  full  of  fancy,  unerring  in  his  cor- 
rectness of  phrase,  happy  in  his  choice  and  management 
of  stanza,  and  admirably  in  command  of  himself  and  his 
art.  His  taste  for  the  most  part  preserved  him  from  the 
conceit,  whether  of  Sidney  or  of  Donne.  Carew,  in  a 
word,  is  the  ideal  poet  of  Waller's  imagination,  an  ideal 
that  Waller  in  his  narrower,  poetically  desiccated,  and 
less  well-bred  age,  never  approached. 

Our  other  English  poetical  hedonist,  Robert  Herrick, 
is  a  very  different  type  of  man.  Born  in  1591,  several 
years  before  Carew,  Herrick  probably  began  writing  not 
long  after  the  death  of  Shakespeare.  He  was  one  of  the 
authentic  sons  of  Ben  and  has  left  more  than  one  poet- 
ical memorial  of  the  brave  old  days  at  "the  Dog,  the  Sun, 
the  Triple  Tun,"  where  Jonson  sat  enthroned,  the  august 
potentate  of  literary  Bohemia: 

Where  we  such  clusters  hud, 
As  made  us  nobly  wild,  not  mad; 

And  yet  each  verse  of  thine 
Oul-<lid  the  meat,  out-did  the  frolic  wine. 

Herrick  somewhat  unfittingly  entered  the  Church  and 
remained  long  years  Vicar  of  Dean  Prior  in  Devonshire, 
of  which  h(!  was  dcf)rived  during  the  C%)iiiinonwealth,  to 
be  restored  on  the  accession  of  King  Charles.    The  i)ub- 


90  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

lication  of  Herrick's  poetry  in  a  volume  called  the  Tles- 
perides  was  delayed  until  1648,  when  his  spirit  of  joy  was 
peculiarly  out  of  touch  with  the  turbulent  days  of  the 
trial  and  execution  of  King  Charles.  Herrick's  volume 
seems  to  have  fallen  dead  from  the  press  despite  a  minor 
part  of  it  on  more  serious  subjects,  designated  Noble 
Numbers  ;  and  his  reputation  remained  obscured  to  a  time 
almost  within  the  recollection  of  the  scholarship  of  to-day. 
The  lyrical  poetry  of  Herrick  —  and  save  for  his  epigrams, 
which  in  comparison  are  negligible,  he  wrote  no  other  — 
is  of  a  range  far  contracted  within  the  ample  bounds  of 
the  Elizabethan  muse  at  large.  Ever  remembering  the 
minor  number  of  his  religious  poems,  many  of  them  very 
beautiful,  no  English  poet  is  so  sensuous,  so  all  but 
wholly  erotic,  and  so  frank  and  whole-souled  a  follower 
of  hedonism  in  his  philosophy  of  life,  and  of  Anacreon, 
Sappho,  and  Catullus  for  his  art  of  poetry.  Herrick  is  a 
lover  of  all  the  joyful  things  of  the  world:  the  spring  with 
its  blossoms  and  country  mirth,  fair  women,  their  youth, 
and  the  charming  details  of  their  beauty,  its  fragility  and 
imperishable  charm.  He  finds  uncommon  joy  in  common, 
often  in  trivial,  things:  the  tie  of  a  ribbon,  the  flutter  of 
his  mistress's  dress,  the  small  pleasures  and  superstitions 
of  his  country  parish,  his  dog,  his  maid,  the  simple  pro- 
vender of  his  larder  —  better  furnished,  one  may  surmise, 
than  the  humility  of  some  of  his  poems  confesses;  and  he 
shudders  at  death  as  the  negation  of  all  that  he  adores, 
lamenting  the  approach  of  years  with  unfeigned  regret 
for  the  joys  that  are  past  and  irrecoverable.  Yet  Herrick's 


UNDER  THE  FIRST  TWO  STUARTS  91 

success  lies  less  in  all  these  things  —  which  he  shares  with 
a  dozen  other  poets  —  than  in  the  vividness  and  simple 
directness  with  which  he  has  realized  them  in  an  art  as 
sure  as  it  is  delicate,  as  apparently  unsophisticated  as  it 
is  metrically  and  stylistically  impeccable.  Happiness  of 
imagery  rarely  lapsing  into  actual  conceit,  sly  humor, 
witchery  of  phrase,  all  are  Herrick's.  In  a  score  of  de- 
lightful poems  —  "Corinna  Going  a-Maying,"  "To  Prim- 
roses," "Meadows,"  "Daffodils,"  "His  Grange,"  and 
"Thanksgiving"  —  Herrick  has  equalled  the  best  of  the 
Elizabethan  lyrists;  and,  in  general,  his  technique  is  more 
perfect  than  theirs.  As  much  cannot  be  said  on  this  score 
either  of  William  Cartwright,  of  whom  Jonson  said  that 
he  wrote  "like  a  man,"  or  Richard  Lovelace,  admirable 
gentleman  that  he  was  in  the  halls  of  Oxford,  at  court, 
and  in  the  field.  Both  are  lyrists  of  great  inequality, 
Lovelace  csj)ccially,  varying  between  some  two  or  three 
perfect  little  songs  (such  as  the  immortal  "To  Lucasta, 
going  to  the  Wars,"  and  "To  Althea,  from  Prison  "),  sure 
of  a  place  in  any  anthology  including  his  time,  and  poems 
that  fall  into  mere  slovenliness  and  unintclligibility. 

In  the  poetry  of  Herrick,  and  more  particularly  in  that 
of  Carew  and  Lovelace,  to  which  we  may  add  poems  of 
Sir  Robert  Ay  ton,  Cartwright,  Brome,  King,  Hoskins 
and  many  more,  we  meet  with  the  earliest  considerable 
body  of  verse  that  comes  under  the  category  of  vcr.s  dc 
societe.  This  variety  of  the  lyric  recognizes  in  the  highly 
coniy)l('x  conditions  of  modern  society  fining  themes  for 
poetry,  and  makes  out  of  the  conventions  of  social  life  a 


92  TIIE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

subject  for  art.  Only  the  poet  who  knows  this  phase  of 
hfe  from  within  can  truly  depict  it;  not  because  it  is 
superior  to  other  life,  but  because  it  is  broken  up  into  a 
greater  number  of  facets,  each  reflecting  its  own  little 
picture.  Vers  de  societe  makes  demand  not  only  on  the 
poet's  breeding  and  intimate  acquaintance  with  the 
usages  and  varieties  of  conduct  and  carriage  which  dis- 
tinguish his  time,  it  demands  also  control,  ease,  elegance 
of  manner,  delicacy  of  touch,  with  an  entire  absence  of 
pedantry,  perfection  of  technique  and  finish.  As  to  the 
result,  exacting  criticism  has  found  its  cavil  and  its  sneer. 
Vers  de  societe  has  been  found  wanting  in  seriousness  as 
occupied  purely  with  trifles;  and  in  part  this  is  true.  Yet 
neither  of  poetry  nor  of  life  is  it  fair  to  demand  that  it 
be  concerned  wholly  with 

Thrones,  dominations,  princedoms,  virtues,  powers. 

The  hyperbole  of  emotion  would  fare  ill  if  judged  by  the 
standards  of  the  hyperbole  of  compliment;  and  those  who 
find  nothing  but  shallowness  and  insincerity  in  the  lyrics 
of  Carew,  are  judging  these  delicately  cut  little  cameos 
by  standards  better  applicable  to  the  portraiture  of  heroes 
hewn  of  granite  or  cast  in  bronze.  "Breadth  of  design," 
"sustained  effort,"  "artistic  seriousness,"  all  have  their 
place  in  the  jargon  of  the  critic  as  measures  to  apply  to 
the  larger  dimensions  of  heroic  and  romantic  art;  but  such 
standards  belong  not  to  the  distinguishing  of  the  scents 
and  colors  of  roses  nor  to  the  appraisement  of  the  gossa- 
mer delicacy  of  many  a  lyric  which  is  no  less  sincere 


UNDER  THE  FIRST  TWO  STUARTS  93 

because  it  happens  to  be  founded  on  the  superficialities 
of  social  intercourse  that  conceal  very  little  after  all  the 
mainsprings  of  true  human  feeling. 

Turning  now  to  the  devotional  poets  of  the  reign  of 
King  Charles,  we  reach  a  group  as  interesting  for  their 
diversity  of  faith  and  opinion  as  for  the  singleness  with 
which  they  cultivated  their  dignified  and  supremely 
difficult  art.  We  have  heard  of  the  devotional  sonneteers, 
Breton,  Constable,  Barnes,  and  the  rest;  the  translation 
of  one  or  more  of  the  psalms  of  David  into  verse  appears 
to  have  been  de  rigueur  to  all  who  pretended  to  any 
cultivation  of  poetry,  from  Surrey  and  Gascoigne  to 
Sternhold  and  Hopkins,  and  from  Queen  Elizabeth  to 
Bacon  and  King  James  himself.  Among  the  Elizabethans, 
Donne  wrote  some  exquisitely  fervent  devotional  poetry, 
Jonson  like  others  a  poem  or  two  in  the  kind;  but  South- 
well alone  devoted  his  muse  in  toto  to  the  praise  and 
glory  of  God.  As  the  Puritan  spirit  stiffened  for  its  strug- 
gle with  kingcraft,  men  of  all  faiths  examined  themselves 
more  rigorously  as  to  their  beliefs,  and  the  literature  of 
faith,  accompanied  by  that  of  controversy,  gained  in 
vogue  and  popularity  day  by  day.  These  were  the  flour- 
ishing times  of  the  religious  pamphleteers,  many  of  whom 
wrote  in  verse  with  pertinacious  and  exasperating  facility. 
George  Wither,  friend  and  collaborator  with  William 
Browne  in  the  Shepherd's  Pipe,  1017,  turned  from  the 
j)astoriil,  from  satire  and  lyrical  verse  (in  the  last  of 
which  he  had  approved  himself  in  Fidelia,  1(117,  and 
in    Fair  Virtue,   1022,   a  genuine   poet),  to  the  religious 


94  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

pamphlet  in  verse.  In  Hymns  and  Songs  of  the  Church, 
Halltiuiahy  and  other  Uke  productions,  he  attested  his 
facility  in  rime  and  the  austere  Puritanism  of  his  faith. 
To  Wither  there  was  a  greater  mistress  than  art;  but 
instead  of  enlisting  art  in  the  service  of  religion,  he  felt 
her  ornaments  were  to  be  discarded  as  among  the  deceitful 
appearances  that  lure  men  from  the  straight  and  narrow 
way.  Wither's  devotional  poetry  is  always  didactic.  Not 
dissimilar  in  general  intent  was  the  even  more  popular 
work  of  Francis  Quarles,  who,  among  many  pamphlets 
which  were  little  more  than  paraphrases  of  scriptural 
story,  wrote  several  volumes  —  Sion's  Elegies,  Sion's 
Sonnets,  for  example  —  of  devotional  lyrics.  The  most 
famous  of  the  books  of  Quarles  is  his  Emblems,  first 
printed  in  1635,  and  followed  almost  up  to  our  own 
time  by  innumerable  editions.  Quarles,  unlike  Wither, 
remained  of  the  Church  of  England;  and,  equally  unlike 
his  Puritan  rival,  decked  out  his  wit  in  all  the  grotesque 
originality  of  conceit.  None  the  less  Quarles  is  as  genu- 
inely devout  as  Wither,  and  these  poets  and  their  lesser 
kin  brought  "the  consolation  and  stay"  of  poetry, 
mingled  with  that  of  religion,  to  thousands  to  whom  the 
rhapsodic  visions  of  Crashaw  must  have  remained  as  a 
fourth  dimension. 

Of  the  many  charming  devotional  poems  of  Herrick 
it  is  not  necessary  to  speak  at  length.  His  is  the  attitude 
of  the  child,  tired  of  play,  who  adores  and  fervidly,  he 
knows  not  why.  Herrick  was  doubtless  a  truly  religious 
man  and  honored  with  unfeigned  piety  the  picturesque 


UNDER  THE  FIRST  TWO  STUARTS  95 

forms  of  the  Church  which  he  served.   Carew,  with  the 

well-bred  gentleman's  sense  of  the  fitness  of   things, 

declares  explicitly, 

I  press  not  to  the  choir,  nor  dare  I  greet 
The  holy  place  with  my  unhallowed  feet. 

Habington  devotes  the  last  book  of  his  Castara  to  the 
heavenly  Muse;  and,  save  for  a  poem  or  two,  the  fine 
religious  verse  of  George  Sandys,  the  traveller,  is  para- 
phrase and  not  lyrical.  There  remain,  if  we  except  Milton, 
the  three  great  religious  poets  of  the  age,  Herbert,  Cra- 
shaw,  and  Vaughan,  and  all  were  yar  excellence  lyrists. 
George  Herbert  was  born  one  of  nature's  darlings,  his 
family,  —  that  of  the  Pembrokes,  —  his  favor,  his  tal- 
ents, and  his  fortune  all  conspiring  to  that  end.  After 
a  distinguished  career  at  Cambridge,  where  he  became, 
in  1619,  Public  Orator  of  the  university,  Herbert  came 
into  favor  at  court  and  enjoyed  the  friendship  of  Bacon 
and  Dr.  Donne.  While  Herbert  was  at  college,  Donne 
had  been  his  mother's  friend,  and  there  can  be  little 
question  that  it  was  his  example  in  the  church  and  in 
poetry  that  determined  Herbert's  ultimate  career.  Hav- 
ing taken  holy  orders,  Herbert  became  rector  of  Fuggel- 
stone  in  1630,  dying  prematurely  three  years  later.  His 
was  a  life  pure,  beautiful,  and  saintlike;  and  his  poetry, 
humble  though  he  reckoned  it,  was  the  flower  of  his  piety 
and  loving  devotion  to  the  animating  spirit  and  the 
ceremonies  of  his  beloved  Church.  His  one  volume.  The 
Tcmjde,  was  i)u])lish('(l  j)f)slhuiiu)usly  and  enjoyed  an 
immediate  and  continued  pojjuhirily.    Herbert  is  a  eon- 


96  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

cettist,  and  delights  not  only  in  ingenious  imagery  but 
even  in  the  puerihties  of  acrostics,  anagrams,  and  shaped 
verses.  But  these  ingenuities  of  his  wit  are  the  mere 
surface  foam  and  bubbles  of  a  tide  of  deep  and  irresistible 
religious  fervor.  The  sincerity  of  Herbert's  feeling,  the 
sweetness  of  his  faith,  and  the  frequently  high  poetic 
quality  that  he  reaches,  make  him  one  of  the  truest,  as 
he  is  still  one  of  the  most  widely  read,  of  our  devotional 
poets. 

The  poetical  relations  subsisting  between  Herbert  and 
Crashaw  are  very  close,  for  it  was  The  Temple  that  begot 
alike  the  spirit  and  the  title  of  Crashaw's  volume  of 
religious  poetry.  Steps  to  the  Temple,  first  printed  in  1646. 
Richard  Crashaw  was  likewise  of  Cambridge,  and  was  one 
of  five  fellows  of  Peterhouse  deprived  of  their  fellowships 
because  they  refused  to  take  the  oath  of  the  Solemn 
League  and  Covenant,  oflPered  almost  literally  at  the 
point  of  the  sword.  Crashaw  soon  after  went  abroad  and, 
entering  the  priesthood  of  the  Roman  Church,  died  a 
sub-canon  of  the  Basilica  Church  of  Our  Lady  of  Loretto. 
Before  he  left  Peterhouse,  Crashaw  had  written  some 
charming  secular  verses,  printed  with  his  other  work 
as  The  Delights  of  the  Muses  ;  but  his  enduring  fame  rests 
on  his  religious  poetry.  Crashaw,  too,  is  a  concettist 
and  follower  of  Donne;  but  where  Donne  sees  things 
oddly  from  the  innate  originality  of  his  mind  and  Herbert 
dwells  with  loving  ingenuity  on  every  curious  detail  of 
his  art,  Crashaw  is  carried  away  in  a  storm  of  imagery, 
confused  and  incoherent  at  times  from  the  very  force  of 


UNDER  THE  FffiST  TWO  STUARTS  97 

his  eloquence.  The  figures  of  Crashaw  are  often  not  only- 
extra  vagant  but  wanting  in  taste;  yet  it  is  easier  to  find 
in  him  passages  of  glowing  religious  emotion,  sustained 
lyrical  art,  music  of  words,  and  splendor  of  diction,  than 
it  is  to  seek  out  his  inequalities  and  lapses  into  the  ex- 
cesses of  imaginative  conceit  wherein  he  has  been  time 
out  of  mind  the  example  and  warning  of  the  critics.  There 
is  no  English  poet,  until  we  come  to  Shelley  and  Swin- 
burne, who  is  so  dithyrambic  as  Crashaw,  and  few  have 
matched  the  ease  and  music  of  his  lines  and  the  atmos- 
phere of  light  and  radiance  that  pervades  the  best  of  his 
poetry. 

There  is  no  such  close  connection  between  Vaughan 
and  his  predecessors  as  that  between  Herbert  and  Cra- 
shaw. Henry  Vaughan,  called  the  Silurist  by  his  contem- 
poraries because  of  his  birth  among  the  people  of  South 
Wales,  entered  Oxford  in  1638,  five  years  after  the  death 
of  Herbert.  Crashaw  he  could  not  have  known  person- 
ally, as  Crashaw  was  of  Cambridge  and  deprived  of  his 
fellowship  while  Vaughan  was  still  an  undergraduate  at 
Oxford.  But  Vauglian  had  a  glimpse  of  the  former  age. 
He  knew  Cartwright  and  Randolph  and  revered  the 
memory  of  Jonsoii.  These  associations  influenced  him 
early  to  the  writing  of  secular  poetry,  some  of  which, 
of  a  grade  little  above  Randolph  or  Stanley,  appeared 
as  early  as  1646.  We  do  not  know  the  particulars  of 
Vaughan's  life.  Before  long  he  turned  liis  attention  with 
Ills  brother  Tlioinas  to  religious  prose  and  verse,  his  most 
im[)<)rtaiit  eollection,  Silex  Scintillans,  appearing  in  1650 


98  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

and  1655.  We  may  imagine  Vaughan  in  his  beautiful 
home  in  South  Wales,  leading  a  life  somewhat  that  of 
Wordsworth  in  his  beloved  Lake  Country.  Indeed,  there 
seems  much  in  common  between  the  two  poets,  especially 
in  their  unbookishness,  their  love  of  nature  in  her  power 
to  reveal  truth  to  man,  their  lofty  poetical  spirit,  in- 
equality of  execution,  and  a  certain  narrowness,  the  price 
of  the  intensity  of  each.  In  Wordsworth  this  narrowness 
took  the  form  of  pride  and  didacticism;  in  Vaughan  it 
was  merely  theological,  and  the  product  of  his  age.  And 
yet  Vaughan,  even  with  this  and  his  halting  execution,  is 
at  times  a  great  if  unequal  poet,  and  his  close  observation 
of  nature  and  his  loving  sympathy  with  all  living  creatures 
presages  an  age  far  in  advance  in  these  respects  of  his  own. 
The  accidental  discovery  of  some  forgotten  manu- 
scripts on  a  street  book-stall  in  1896,  has  placed  a  fourth 
poet,  equally  fervent  in  his  piety  if  humbler  in  his  attain- 
ments, beside  the  trio,  Herbert,  Crashaw,  and  Vaughan. 
Thomas  Traherne  was  nearly  of  an  age  with  Vaughan 
and,  like  him,  was  partly  at  least  of  Welsh  blood.  Pre- 
ceding Vaughan  by  a  year  or  two  at  Oxford,  Traherne  be- 
came private  chaplain  to  Sir  Orlando  Bridgeman,  and  by 
that  circumstance  was  identified  as  the  author  of  a  modest 
amount  of  devotional  prose  and  verse  of  much  sweetness 
and  fervency.  Traherne's  poetry,  while  warmer  tem- 
pered than  that  of  Vaughan,  seldom  attains  the  glow  of 
Herbert,  far  less  the  flame  of  Crashaw.  Traherne  has  an 
easy  facility  of  phrase  and  a  command  over  his  verse 
that  is  surer  than  that  of  Vaughan;  and  he  maintains  a 


LWDER  THE  FIRST  TWO  STUARTS  99 

uniform,  if  somewhat  monotonous,  excellence  and  music 
on  his  one  happy  string,  the  interdependence  of  God 
and  man,  that  makes  of  man,  not  a  corpus  vile  of  cor- 
ruption, but  "a  spring  of  joy  crowned  with  glory."  It  is 
pleasant  to  discover  among  devotional  poets  strains  so 
uniformly  cheerful  as  Traherne's,  and  thus  poetically 
to  recover  from  Puritan  despair,  Anglican  preciosity 
as  to  form,  and  the  visionary  ecstatics  of  Romanized 
Crashaw. 

Among  the  minor  lyrists  of  the  latter  days  of  Charles  I 
may  be  mentioned  Henry  King,  Bishop  of  Chichester, 
who  amused  himself  with  poetry  during  a  long  life,  and 
negligently  allowed  his  work  to  be  much  confused  with 
that  of  other  poets  of  his  day.  Thomas  Stanley,  too, 
noted  for  his  History  of  Philosophy,  was  also  a  poet  in  his 
youth,  now  in  the  manner  of  Donne,  now  in  a  less  dif- 
ficult mode.  Of  Habington  and  hisCastara,  sole  theme  for 
his  devoted  muse,  we  have  already  heard,  and  of  Love- 
lace, whose  fortunes  were  as  unequal  as  his  poetry.  Sir 
John  SuckHng,  with  all  his  coxcombry  and  carelessness, 
stands  above  any  of  these  in  his  poetical  gifts  and,  with 
his  dramas  as  well  as  his  lyrical  poetry  considered,  holds 
a  dignified  place  in  the  annals  of  literature.  Suckling 
inherited  wealth  and  a  high  social  jwsilion  and  i)lunged, 
when  a  mere  youth,  into  tlic  gayest  and  wildest  of  lives, 
becoming  no  less  famous  for  his  verses  and  his  wit  than 
ff)r  his  lavish  extravagance,  inveterate  gaming,  and  dis- 
solute life.  As  a  writer  of  vers  de  sociclc,  delightful,  dar- 
ing, and  cynical,  perfectly  well-bred,  and  at  times  of  the 


100  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

highest  artistic  merit,  Suckling,  at  his  best,  was  unex- 
celled in  his  age.  He  died,  a  suicide,  before  the  beginning 
of  the  civil  war.  Charles  Cotton,  a  man  of  more  equable 
spirit,  was  bom  in  1630  and  lived  on  long  after  the  Re- 
storation, though  his  lyrics,  most  of  them,  belong  to  his 
earlier  days.  Several  things  are  interesting  about  Cotton. 
He  was  the  personal  friend  of  Isaak  Walton  and  wrote  the 
well-known  continuation  of  The  Complete  Angler ;  he  was 
well-versed  in  French  literature,  and  not  only  translated 
much  from  it  but  fell  under  the  immediate  influence  of 
his  contemporaries  in  French  poetry.  A  genuine  love  of 
nature  and  ability  to  express  in  brief  and  vivid  words  that 
love,  are  characteristics  of  Cotton's  poetry;  and  again 
and  again  he  reaches  excellence  in  his  lyrics  of  love  and 
good-fellowship.  Not  less  appreciative  of  nature,  though 
in  her  milder  moods,  is  Andrew  Marvell,  Assistant  Latin 
Secretary  to  Milton  in  Commonwealth  times  and  re- 
doubtable satirist  of  Charles  II  and  his  dissolute  court. 
The  poetry  of  Marvell  belongs  to  his  earlier  days,  when 
he  was  a  tutor  in  the  family  of  the  parliamentary  general. 
Lord  Fairfax.  Marvell  revived  the  pastoral  lyric  with 
the  unaffectedness  and  susceptibility  to  nature's  charm 
that  marked  the  poetry  of  Greene  or  Breton;  and  he 
imbued  it  with  a  much  more  serious  thoughtfulness.  But 
Marvell's  love  of  nature  is  at  closer  hand,  as  shown  in 
several  lyrics,  remarkably  personal  and  circumstantial  in 
detail,  and  in  his  few  rare  devotional  poems.  Suckling 
marks  the  crown  of  the  conscious  artistic  lyric,  poetry  as 
the  mirror  of  the  sentiment  and  gallantry,  the  delicate 


UNDER  THE  FIRST  TWO  STUARTS  101 

compliment  and  raillery  of  the  conversation  of  folk  of 
the  best  society.  Beginning  in  the  conscious  art  of  Jonson, 
this  species  of  the  lyric  reached  its  culmination  in  Carew, 
to  flourish  in  a  desiccated  branch  in  the  poetry  of  over- 
praised Waller.  But  aside  from  Herrick  and  the  greater 
devotional  poets,  the  ultimate  hope  of  the  far  future  lay 
in  the  naturalness  and  unaffectedness  of  poets  such  as 
Cotton  and  Marvell,  in  whose  sincere  and  beautiful  minor 
poems  are  contained  some  of  the  choicest  qualities  of 
English  lyrical  art. 

Allusion  has  just  been  made  to  the  over-praised  lyrical 
poetry  of  Waller,  whose  position  in  the  history  of  English 
poetry  has  been  traditionally  misunderstood.  Edmund 
Waller  was  born  in  1605,  three  years  before  Milton  and 
when  Shakespeare  had  as  yet  eight  years  to  live.  He  was 
the  senior  of  every  poet  named  in  the  last  paragraph 
excepting  Habington,  and  was  writing  poetry  before  the 
repute  of  Carew,  Suckling,  or  Lovelace.  There  were  three 
editions  of  Waller's  poetry  in  the  year  1645,  before  either 
Ilcrrick  or  Carew  had  come  into  print,  but  the  author's 
authentic  publication  of  his  work  belongs  to  1664. 
Waller  was  a  man  of  weallli  and  position,  a  trimmer  in 
politics,  serving  Cromwell  or  his  enemies  as  opportunity 
offered.  Waller  was  likewise  a  trimmer  in  poetry.  An 
actual  examinalion  of  his  earlier  poems,  before  they  were 
sophisticated  into  accordance  with  the  style  that  came 
to  prevail  by  1664,  disproves  the  glib  statement  that 
W.allcr's  "earliest  verses  .  .  .  possess  the  formal  char- 
acter, the  precise  prosody  without  irregularity  or  over- 


102  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

flow,  which  we  find  in  the  ordinary  verse  of  Dryden,  Pope, 
and  Darwin."^  Waller's  poetry  is  resonant  with  the  tones 
of  other  men  —  Carew  and  Herrick,  in  particular,  both 
well  known  in  manuscript  and  anthologies  before  the  pub- 
lication of  their  collected  works;  —  and  the  resonance  is 
always  weaker  than  the  original  and  always  on  the  more 
j)opular  note.  Waller  fell  in  happily  with  an  age  that  was 
wearied  with  the  ingenuities  of  conceit,  and  shrinking 
from  the  vigor  of  an  exercise  of  the  imagination  to  tlie 
safer  and  more  comprehensible  functions  of  the  fancy. 
Waller  would  have  been  lost  in  the  age  of  Elizabeth; 
as  it  was,  he  was  found  only  when  the  tide  of  poetry 
had  ebbed,  save  for  Milton  and  Dryden,  to  the  shallows 
wherein  swarmed  the  Bromes,  Roscommons,  and  Buck- 
inghamshires.   Among  them  Waller  was  a  Triton. 

Abraham  Cowley  was  a  greater  poet  and  a  far  more 
estimable  man.  Only  three  years  Waller's  senior,  Cowley 
was  in  print  as  a  poet  at  fifteen.  Ejected  from  Cambridge 
for  his  royalist  leanings,  after  a  brief  stay  at  Oxford 
he  entered  the  services  of  Queen  Henrietta  Maria,  retir- 
ing with  her  to  Paris,  on  the  surrender  of  King  Charles. 
There  it  was  that  he  found  his  college  intimate,  Crashaw, 
in  want,  and  sent  him  with  a  royal  introduction  to  Rome. 
Cowley's  life  was  cleanly,  religious,  and  somewhat  aus- 
tere. He  was  neglected  with  many  another  good  man  by 
King  Charles  II  at  the  Restoration,  but  repaid  at  his 
death  by  a  royal  bon  mot.  The  range  of  Cowley's  literary 
activity  in  poetry  and  prose  is  quite  unusual  among  the 

*  E.  Gosse,  Eighteenth  Century  Literature,  London,  1889,  pp.  2,  4. 


UNDER  THE  FIRST  TWO  STUARTS  103 

lyrists  of  his  time.  With  a  name  for  himself  in  the  drama, 
the  familiar  essay,  and  in  serious  and  epical  poetry,  Cow- 
ley bulks  large,  and  his  collected  works,  in  their  many  edi- 
tions, assume  the  portentous.  In  his  lyrical  poetry  Cow- 
ley is  alike  a  follower  of  Jonson  and  of  Donne,  though  the 
constructiveness  of  the  former  has  less  affected  his  meth- 
ods and  style  than  the  latter's  originality  and  conceit. 
Cowley  was  possessed  of  excellent  poetical  gifts,  and  he 
made  by  honest  endeavor  the  best  possible  use  of  them. 
He  was  emulous  of  originality  of  thought  and  phrase,  and 
we  feel  at  times  that  he  ingeniously  strove  for  them.  He 
essayed  a  multitude  of  themes  and  a  variety  of  stanzas; 
his  mood  ranges  from  serious,  religious,  or  moral  thought, 
to  lighter  lyrics  of  love  and  humorous  mock  lyrics:  and 
he  is  almost  completely  successful  in  each.  One  of  Cow- 
ley's chief  foUowings  of  Jonson  consists  in  a  number 
of  lengthy  poems  on  serious  subjects  which  he  entitled 
"  Pindaric  Odes."  Jonson,  who  never  spoke  idly  where 
the  classics  were  concerned,  wrote  several  poems  which 
he  called  Odes,  and  one  especially  on  the  death  of  Sir 
Henry  Morison  that  he  entitled  "A  Pindaric  Ode,"  In 
them  he  preserves  to  a  nicety  the  formal  conditions  of 
the  Greek  model.  Cowley,  although  a  competent  Latin 
scholar,  as  his  Latin  play  Naufragium  Jocularc  suffi- 
ciently attests,  was  not  so  happy  with  his  "Pindarics," 
which,  in  their  slovenly  disregard  of  the  rules  of  the  form 
so  flaunted  in  their  lilies,  had  much  to  do  with  the  abuse 
of  the  term,  ode,  in  later  English  poetry  to  signify  almost 
any  poem  of  a  more  or  less  serious  inlent,  written  in  ir- 


104  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

regular  metre.*  Cowley's  Odes,  it  may  be  fancied,  have 
always  been  more  admired  than  read;  they  are  estimable 
productions,  but  not  too  often  re-readable.  Cowley  died 
in  1667,  too  soon  to  acquire  the  gait  and  habit  of  the  new 
restrictive  poetry.  His  repute  was  greatest  in  the  thirties 
and  forties,  before  the  conceit,  which  he  practised  with 
great  ingenuity  and  success,  had  fallen  into  disrepute, 
and  before  the  star  of  Waller  had  risen,  harbinger  to  that 
greater  luminary,  Dryden.  By  the  time  that  Pope  had 
come  to  write,  Cowley  was  hopelessly  out  of  fashion; 
and  the  age  that  began  a  biographical  notice  of  Waller 
with  the  words,  "the  most  celebrated  English  poet  that 
England  ever  produced,"  asked  the  cruel  question:  "Who, 
now,  reads  Cowley  ?  " 

With  the  death  of  King  Charles  and  the  amazement 
and  reaction  that  it  bred,  the  writing  and  the  reading  of 
poetry  flagged  as  men  turned  to  the  sterner  political  tasks 
of  the  moment.  Milton  at  once  threw  himself  with  aban- 
don into  a  struggle  which  seemed  to  him  vital  to  the  free- 
dom of  England,  and  Marvell  soon  left  his  seclusion  to 
war  with  his  pen  by  Milton's  side.  As  for  the  Cavalier 
poets,  those  who  were  not  dead  or  in  exile  were  living, 
like  the  once  magnificent  Lovelace,  in  poverty  if  not  in 
actual  want;  caroling  boisterous  songs  in  praise  of  loyalty 
and  drink,  like  Cotton  and  Alexander  Brome;  or,  at  the 

*  Cowley's  age  was  not  insensible  to  these  defects;  witness  the  strict- 
ures of  Congreve  in  his  excellent  Discourse  on  the  Pindarique  Ode,  1705. 
For  a  short  and  rather  sligiit  summary  of  the  English  ode,  see  Mr. 
Gosse's  English  Odes,  "  Introduction,"  1889. 


UNDER  THE  FIRST  TWO  STUARTS  105 

least,  abusing  their  Puritan  enemies,  like  Clieveland,  in 
satire,  ribaldry,  and  jest.  Stanley  had  turned  from  poetry 
to  philosophy;  Montrose,  "one  of  the  last  of  the  goodly 
line  of  English  noblemen  whose  highly  tempered  metal 
expressed  itself  unaffectedly  in  song,"  survived  King 
Charles  only  a  year.  Save  for  Vaughan  and  a  few  be- 
lated collections  of  verse  such  as  those  of  King,  Stanley, 
Sherborne,  and  the  posthumous  volumes  of  Crashaw  and 
Cartwright,  the  fifth  decade  of  the  century  is  peculiarly 
barren  of  poetry.  But  the  transition  into  the  new  age  was 
in  process  in  poetry  as  elsewhere.  Waller  and  Davenant 
were  already  adapting  their  thoughts  with  their  metres 
to  changing  conditions  and,  closer  to  the  return  of  the 
king,  John  Drydcn  began  to  write. 

In  our  contemplation  of  the  lyrical  poetry  of  the  reigns 
of  King  James  and  Charles  I,  with  its  ingenuity,  its  tune- 
fulness, its  religious  fervor,  its  cynicism,  and  its  rich  and 
varied  form,  we  have  left  for  the  last  the  greatest  of  its 
names;  for  although  Milton  partook  far  more  of  the  na- 
ture of  his  time  than  is  comnionly  allowed,  he  stood  aloof 
in  his  art,  as  in  his  faith,  little  touched  by  the  idle  tem- 
porary fashions  in  literature  that  dashed  their  moment- 
ary foam  at  his  feet.  Chronologically,  there  is  no  mak- 
ing Milton  an  Elizabethan,  whatever  the  reminiscence 
or  paternity  of  his  poetry.  He  was  almost  precisely  the 
contemporary  of  Waller,  who,  however,  some  years  sur- 
vived him.  Ilcrrick,  nearly  twenty  years  Milton's  senior, 
died  in  the  same  year  with  liim,  1074;  Cowley,  his  junior 
by  ten  years,  died  before  him,  and  for  nearly  fifteen  years 


106  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

Milton  and  Dryden  were  fellow  subjects  of  Charles  II. 
The  poetical  influences  upon  Milton,  however,  were 
those  to  wliich  the  Elizabethans  had  been  subjected, 
working  directly  upon  him  as  they  had  worked  upon 
them,  though  with  the  slanting  rays  of  an  afternoon  sun. 
We  hear,  for  example,  how  deeply  and  lovingly  Milton 
read  the  classics  at  Cambridge;  how  he  acquired  a  famil- 
iarity with  the  Italian  poets  and  wrote  sonnets  of  his  own 
in  that  beautiful  tongue;  how  he  knew  and  appreciated  our 
English  poets  from  Chaucer  and  Spenser  to  the  Fletcher 
of  The  Faithful  Shepherdess  and  the  William  Browne  of 
Britannia's  Pastorals.  We  hear,  too,  how  above  all  Mil- 
ton was  influenced  by  the  study  of  the  Bible  in  his  liter- 
ary as  well  as  his  religious  spirit,  and  this  to  a  degree  be- 
yond that  of  any  English  poet  that  had  gone  before  him. 
A  notable  thing  about  the  inspiration  of  Milton  is  its 
bookishness.  Few  poets  ever  studied  the  classics  so  lov- 
ingly and  so  completely;  few  divines  have  been  so  sedu- 
lously read  in  the  Bible;  his  was  an  extraordinary  con- 
junction of  profane  with  sacred  learning.  And  yet,  though 
read  in  the  poets,  the  philosophers,  the  makers  of  great 
literature  as  few  poets  have  ever  been  read,  it  must  be 
confessed  that  Milton  was  less  well  read  in  the  life  about 
him,  though  an  eager  participant,  when  the  time  came, 
in  the  political  affairs  that  were  shaping  the  destiny  of 
England.  No  man  can  escape  the  direct  rays  of  the  life 
about  him  unless  he  sequester  himself  in  monasteries  or 
live  in  the  gloom  of  prisons.  Yet  it  is  easy  for  the  scholar 
and  lover  of  books  to  see  life  less  by  the  direct,  unbroken 


UNDER  THE  FIRST  TWO  STUARTS  107 

ray  than  as  its  light  is  refracted  by  the  prismatic  lenses 
of  learning  and  former  poetic  art,  often  thus  shivered  into 
a  new  beauty  indeed,  but  into  a  partial  beauty  after  all. 

The  lyrical  poetry  of  ]Milton,  save  for  the  later  sonnets 
and  the  choruses  of  Samson  Agonistes,  belongs,  as  is  well 
known,  to  the  period  before  the  civil  war.  Here,  free  as 
yet  from  the  trumpet  call  to  civic  duty,  he  was  able  to 
give  the  earlier  fruits  of  that  reading  and  study  in  which 
he  had  fitted  himself,  like  a  religious  no\'ice,  for  the  holy 
calling  of  poetry.  These  early  poems  of  Milton  com- 
prise, among  others,  the  marvellous  "Ode  on  the  Na- 
tivity," the  exquisite  companion  lyrics  "L' Allegro"  and 
"n  Penseroso,"  the  "mask,"  as  he  chose  to  call  it,  of 
"Comus,"  and  the  noble  threnody  on  the  death  of  a  dear 
friend,  "Lycidas."  To  have  achieved  poetry  so  varied  in 
kind  and  so  perfect  in  technical  finish  before  the  age  of 
thirty  was  a  marvel  not  to  be  repeated  in  English  litera- 
ture until  the  days  of  Shelley  and  Keats;  and  Milton  him- 
self did  not  rise,  at  least  lyrically,  above  these  triumphs  of 
his  young  maturity.  In  the  matter  of  immediate  influ- 
ences, we  may  discern  how  the  "Ode  on  the  Nativity" 
smacks  of  the  "  Marinism,"  fashionable  in  the  poetic  cir- 
cles of  the  poet's  day  at  Cambridge  and  exemplified  in 
fantastic  beauty  and  confusion  in  Crashaw's  "Hymn"  on 
the  same  great  theme.  We  may  note  how  here  and  else- 
where Spenser  was  Milton's  guiding  star,  how  Burton's 
"Anatomy  of  Melancholy"  may  have  suggested  the  con- 
trast of  "L' Allegro"  and  "II  rcnsrroso,"  and  a  song  of 
John  Fletcher's  the  tone  and    technifiue  of    the  latter. 


108  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

"Comus,"  too,  is  but  one  in  a  long  and  brilliant  succes- 
sion of  sumptuous  court  entertainments  from  Jonson  to 
Carew,  and  "Lycidas"  harks  back,  once  more  through 
many  pastoralists,  to  Spenser,  in  whose  Arcadian  back- 
ground linger  the  honored  classical  shades  of  Vergil, 
Theocritus,  and  Moschus.  Yet  there  is  ever  about  the 
poetry  of  Milton  a  supreme  originality  that  arises  out 
of  a  perfect  artistic  assimilation  of  the  materials  of  his 
art,  the  imprint  that  marks  the  man  of  simple,  great,  and 
unafifected  nature. 

Milton  is  notably  a  serious  poet.  To  him  poetry  was 
no  "vain  and  amateurish"  art,  but  ever  to  be  cherished 
as  a  precious  vocation,  less  sacred  only  than  his  allegiance 
to  the  state  and  his  duty  to  God.  Milton  did  more  than 
any  of  our  great  poets,  save  Wordsworth,  to  reclaim 
poetry  to  a  serene  and  steady  contemplation  of  the  weight- 
ier themes  of  life  and  to  wean  us  from  the  notion  that 
lyrical  poetry  especially  is  concerned  only  with  the  petty 
expression  of  trivial  individual  emotions.  It  lias  been  re- 
marked that  love  is  not  a  theme  of  Milton's  poetry;  that, 
despite  the  contrasted  titles  of  "L'  Allegro"  and  "  II  Pen- 
seroso,"  there  is  melancholy  in  his  mirth,  but  no  mirth  in 
his  melancholy;  that  "the  topical  bias,"  that  is,  an  inter- 
est in  affairs  current  and  personal,  is  one  of  the  inherent 
characteristics,  if  not  a  defect,  of  his  poetry.  All  this  is 
true;  but  what  Milton  lacked  in  diffuseness,  in  sympathy 
with  individual  men  and  the  complexities  of  their  lives 
and  feelings,  he  more  than  made  up  in  the  intensity  of  his 
personality,  the  energy  of  his  inspiration,  and  the  refine- 


UNDER  THE  FIRST  TWO  STUARTS  109 

ment  of  his  taste.  In  "Lycidas"  for  example,  Milton  was 
practising  a  funereal  art  long  sanctioned  in  the  lugubrious 
elegies  of  his  English  predecessors;  but  with  the  fantas- 
tic wealth  of  the  Renaissance  pastorals  and  the  chaster 
examples  of  the  classics  before  him,  he  raised  this  spe- 
cies of  verse  to  a  plane  of  artistic  seriousness  that  made 
"Adonais,"  "Thyrsis,"  and  "In  Memoriam"  possible. 
So,  too,  in  his  incomparable  sonnets  Milton's  attitude  is 
always  dignified,  his  themes  of  moment,  his  execution 
finished,  restrained  yet  ample.  Those  in  Italian  celebrate 
an  obscure  adventure  in  no  wise  discreditable  to  Milton's 
heart,  if  they  be  not  rather  mere  poetical  exercises  in  a 
beautiful  foreign  tongue.  Except  for  these,  with  the  son- 
net on  the  nightingale  and  the  cuckoo,  neither  does  love, 
the  all  but  universal  theme  of  previous  sonneteering,  ap- 
pear in  the  sonnets  of  Milton,  nor  do  they  group  together 
in  any  unity  or  singleness  of  mood.  Milton  emancipated 
the  English  sonnet  from  the  seciuence,  realizing  its  unity 
as  of  a  higher  order  than  that  dependent  on  the  accidents 
of  collocation.  Each  of  his  sonnets  is  the  effective  pre- 
sentation of  a  single  mood,  based  upon  some  reality  of 
person,  character,  or  incident;  and  it  was  in  the  nature  of 
things  that,  with  this  recognition  of  the  essential  unity 
of  the  thought,  Milton  should  work  in  consciousness 
of  those  niceties  of  form  that  give  to  the  Petrarchan 
sonnet  its  unmatchable  position  among  tlie  verse  forms 
of  lyrical  poetry.  Milton  practised  the  sonnet  in  strict 
accord  with  the  srf|uence  of  rime  which  Italian  usage 
had  established.   lie  was  not  always  so  rigid  in  his  ad- 


110  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

herence  to  the  subtler  Italian  refinements  as  to  pause. 
But  who  shall  say  that  such  a  sonnet  as  that  addressed  to 
Cromwell  or  the  poet's  noble  utterance  "On  his  blind- 
ness" could  be  bettered  by  a  transfer  of  the  point  of  tran- 
sition from  sestet  to  octave  to  a  place  more  regular  ac- 
cording to  exotic  standards  ? 

Indubitably  in  Milton  the  poet  ever  ruled  the  scholar, 
and  we  must  look  back  to  yEschylus  and  Sophocles  for  a 
poetic  calm  and  elevation,  a  certainty  of  technique  and 
a  sustained  nobility  of  thought  such  as  his.  However,  the 
poet  controlling  the  scholar  alone  will  not  explain  Mil- 
ton; for  it  must  be  confessed  that  in  contrast  with  other 
poets  of  the  first  rank,  Milton  is  not  remarkable  either 
for  the  fruitfulness  or  the  variety  of  his  reflections.  It 
has  often  been  observed  with  wonder  that  he  should  have 
made  so  much  out  of  material  well  known  and  accepted. 
By  way  of  example,  Mark  Pattison^  once  took  the  famous 
sonnet  "Avenge,  O  Lord,  thy  slaughtered  saints,"  known 
too  well  to  need  quotation  here,  and,  showing  first  that  a 
familiar  quotation  from  Tertullian  is  its  only  thought, 
and  acknowledging  its  "  diction  "  to  fall  "  almost  below  the 
ordinary,"  declared,  none  the  less,  that  "it  would  not  be 
easy  to  find  a  sonnet  in  any  language  of  equal  power  to 
vibrate  through  all  the  fibres  of  feeling."  And  he  finds 
the  secret  of  this  paradox  in  the  circumstance  that  "the 
poetry  of  a  poem  [may  be]  lodged  somewhere  else  than  in 
its  matter  or  its  thoughts,  or  its  imagery,  or  its  words. 
Our  heart  is  here  taken,"  he  continues,  "  by  storm,  but  not 

^  Introduction  to  The  Sonnets  of  John  Milton,  1892,  pp.  58-60. 


UNDER  THE  FIRST  TWO  STUARTS  111 

by  these  things.  The  poet  hath  breathed  on  us  and  wel 
have  received  his  inspiration,"  The  poetry  of  Milton,  in 
ultimate  analysis,  resides  in  his  transcendent  personality, 
a  personality  in  which  simplicity,  intensity,  and  confidence 
in  himself  and  in  his  divine  calling  unite  as  they  have 
never  united  before.  His  was  a  great  and  fervent  soul, 
informing  a  nature  so  faithful  that  in  his  poetry  the  first 
condition  is  the  perfection  of  artistry.  Careless  work, 
slovenly  work,  work  neither  fully  thought  out  nor  per- 
fected, such  as  sullied  the  repute  of  other  poets,  was  to 
Milton  an  impossibility,  for  poetry  was  to  him  a  species 
of  worship  and  worship  was  to  him  an  art.  Milton's  is  the 
only  egotism  that  the  world  has  accepted  \Nathout  cavil 
and  without  sneer.  There  is  nothing  ridiculous  in  the 
assumption  of  a  Titan  that  he  is  a  Titan.  It  was  Milton's 
calm  avowal  that  his  poetic  "gifts"  were  of  "God's  im- 
parting, .  .  .  which  I  boast  not,  but  thankfully  acknow- 
ledge, and  fear  also  lest  at  my  certain  account  they  be 
reckoned  to  me  many  rather  than  few."  His  was  the  gift 
of  the  ten  talents,  and  he  rendered  in  the  measure  of  their 
fullness.  This  is  why  "L 'Allegro"  and  "II  Pcnscroso," 
"Lycidas,"  that  splendid  threnody  devoted  to  the  rites 
of  friendship,  and  the  lyrics  of  "Comus"  in  their  pre- 
cious setting,  never  stale  of  repetition;  this  is  why  they 
remain,  with  the  sonnets,  austere,  personal,  and  occa- 
sional though  most  of  them  are,  priceless  as  jewels  and  as 
permanent,  to  fail  us  never. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE   LYRICAL   DECLINE;   FROM   THE   RESTORATION  TO  THE 
DEATH    OF   COWPER 

ITH  the  Restoration  of  King  Charles  II  to 
the  throne,  indubitably  a  new  spirit  came  to 
prevail  in  English  poetry,  and  in  no  form  was 
the  change  so  complete  as  in  the  lyric.  The 
new  poets  sang  from  the  first  in  the  newer  strain;  the 
older  poets  unlearned  their  art  of  singing  or,  failing  so  to 
do,  were  carried  back  into  a  swift  oblivion.  Such  was  the 
case  with  Cowley  whose  reputation  was  soon  eclipsed  by 
the  greater  fame  of  Dry  den.  Milton  was  inadequately 
appreciated  in  his  own  later  time.  Herrick,  Carew,  Suck- 
ling, Herbert  —  to  say  nothing  of  the  earlier  lyrists  —  all 
were  speedily  forgotten ;  and  Waller,  who  had  continued 
to  keep  his  poetical  (like  his  political)  cock-boat  afloat  by 
its  very  lightness  in  the  rapids  of  Commonwealth  times, 
now  floated  out  into  the  calm  waters  of  the  new  age  the 
acclaimed  leader  of  the  new  poetry. 

It  is  customary  at  this  point  in  the  history  of  English 
poetry  to  dilate  on  the  extravagances  of  the  pre-Restor- 
ation  poets,  to  gibbet  the  conceits  of  Cowley  and  Crashaw 
and  the  occasional  lapses  into  bad  taste  of  Cartwright, 
Lovelace,  and  lesser  men.  Clearly,  in  view  of  such  condi- 
tions, something  had  to  be  done;  so  the  temperate  Wal- 


THE  LYRICAL  DECLINE  113 

ler  and  the  admirable  Dryden  here  step  forth  consciously 
and  generously  to  save  English  poetry  from  impending 
wreck  on  the  jagged  rocks  of  its  own  exorbitant  imagin- 
ation. As  a  matter  of  fact,  no  literature  has  ever  been 
wrecked  by  the  exuberance  of  the  poetical  imagination, 
although  poverty  of  imagination  has  stranded  many  a 
petty  craft  on  the  sand-banks  of  time.  Even  the  misdi- 
rected ingenuity  of  the  conceit  —  which  began  with  the 
first  of  the  Petrarchists,  not  with  Donne,  much  less  with 
Crashaw  —  cannot  be  held  accountable  for  the  change  in 
literary  taste.  Passing  by  the  unfairness  of  a  comparison 
of  the  lapses  of  the  concettists  and  their  failures  with  the 
controlled  literary  style  of  their  successors  in  the  next  age, 
it  may  be  affirmed  that  the  contrast  has  been  much  ex- 
aggerated; and  it  might  be  easy  to  find  passages  in  the 
poetry  of  the  pre-Restoration  poets  exhibiting  a  control,  a 
sequence  of  thought,  and  a  moderation  not  inferior  to  the 
much  praised  "classicality"  that  came  after.  Nor  is  it 
diflirull  to  find  conceit,  extravagance,  and  want  of  taste 
in  the  early  work  even  of  Dryden.  Among  the  many 
aflirtnations  as  to  this  contrast  none  is  more  gratuitous 
than  that  which  makes  Drj^den,  or  even  Waller,  a  con- 
.scious  leader  in  the  change  of  poetical  taste,  or  even,  in  a 
very  large  measure,  responsible  for  it  in  its  alleged  foroigii 
importation. ^  The  qualities  of  style  and  the  manner  of 
thinking  that  came,  in  their  fullness,  to  characterize  the 
literature  of  the  Augustan  age,  had  their  origins  far  back,  ^ 

'  S<-«-  thf  prfscnt  writfr's  "  Ikn  Jonsori  and  Ihv.  Cla-ssiral  School," 
Publications  oj  the  Modem  Language  Aaaociation,  xiii,  1898. 


lU  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

and  mainly  in  England ;  as  to  poetry  at  least,  we  shall  find 
them  especially  (as  already  suggested)  in  the  precept  and 
example  of  Jonson.  It  can  be  shown  beyond  the  peradven- 
ture  of  a  doubt  that  Jonson  exhibits  in  his  non-dramatic 
poetry,  so  much  of  it  occasional,  a  trend  towards  a  pre- 
cise, pointed,  and  antithetical  diction,  a  Latinized  vocabu- 
lary, and  a  preference  for  the  decasyllabic  couplet  — 
stronghold  of  the  Augustans  —  over  all  other  kinds  of 
verse.  Dryden,  like  Jonson,  was  a  playwright,  a  satir- 
ist, a  poetical  translator,  and  a  critic  of  high  order;  and 
Davenant,  who  intervened,  in  some  respects  the  most  im- 
portant literary  figure  between  them,  affected  a  similar 
catholicity.  As  to  the  lyric,  it  was  in  the  nature  of  things 
that  it  should  suffer  in  the  new  age.  Already  the  imagina- 
tive power  of  the  best  of  the  Elizabethan  lyrists  had  con- 
tracted largely  to  the  play  of  fancy  that  characterized  the 
concettists  and  writers  of  vers  de  socieie.  Although  Jon- 
son wrote  a  poem  telling  us  fancifully  "Why  I  write  not 
of  love,"  it  may  be  suspected  that  he  felt  a  certain  con- 
descension with  respect  to  the  whole  lyrical  art  as  con- 
trasted with  his  serious  work  in  drama  and  satire,  a 
condescension  shared  by  Dryden  and  others  that  came 
after.  Should  this  attitude  among  the  lyrists  of  post- 
Restoration  times  be  held  in  question,  we  have  only  to 
contrast  the  impassioned  eloquence  of  Sidney's  sonnets, 
or  those  even  of  Spenser,  with  the  polite  love-making  of 
Waller  in  his  effusions  to  his  Saccharissa,  to  feel  the  dif- 
ference. Therein  this  pattern  of  the  new  polite  age  dis- 
closed to  his  admiring  followers  how  a  fine  gentleman 


THE  LYRICAL  DECLINE  115 

should  court  the  lady  of  his  poetical  choice  in  verse  as 
smooth  and  filed  as  his  sentiments  were  becoming  and  un- 
sullied by  so  vulgar  a  thing  as  passion.  The  coxcombry 
of  some  of  these  verses  can  be  made  credible  only  by 
quotation,  though  seriously  to  criticise  it  is,  according  to 
the  proverb,  to  break  a  butterfly  on  the  wheel. 

Thyrsis,  a  youth  of  the  inspired  train, 
Fair  Saccharissa  loved,  but  loved  in  vain: 
Like  Phoebus  sung  the  no  less  amorous  boy; 
Like  Daphne  she,  as  lovely,  and  as  coy! 
With  numbers  he  the  flying  nymph  pursues; 
With  numbers,  such  as  Phoebus'  self  might  use! 

But  alas!  the  cruel  nymph  would  not  for  a  moment  stay, 
and  after  a  chase 

O'er  craggy  mountains,  and  thro'  flowery  meads, 

the  lover  gives  up  the  pursuit  with  these  consolatory  con- 
gratulations: 

Yet,  what  he  sung  in  his  immortal  strain. 
Though  unsuccessful,  was  not  sung  in  vain: 
All,  but  the  nym{)h  who  should  redress  his  wrong. 
Attend  his  passion,  an<l  approve  his  song. 
Like  Pha;bus  thus,  acquiring  unsought  praise. 
He  catched  at  love,  and  fllled  his  arms  with  bays. 

Sir  William  Davcnant,  god-son  of  Shakespeare,  dra- 
matist and  author  of  the  epic  Gondibert,  has  less  of  the 
lyrical  element  in  him  than  almost  any  poet  of  equal  rank. 
A  few  songs,  scattered  through  the  plays,  echoes  at  long 
range  of  the  brave  old  age,  an  occasional  poem  or  two, 
rising  somewhat  at  times  towards  the  higher  air  in  which 
Iho  lyric  flourishes  —  these  are  absolutely  all   fli;it  there 


116  THE  ENGLISH  LYKIC 

are  to  name  of  the  strenuous  first  laureate  of  King  Charles. 
Great  poet,  too,  that  Dryden  was,  towering  tall  and  un- 
ashamed in  his  vigorous  contrasted  art  even  beside  the 
austere  bulk  of  Milton,  his  greatest  limitations  appear 
in  his  lyrical  poetry.  Three  noble  and  serious  "Odes" 
he  did  achieve,  the  two  "for  St.  Cecilia's  Day"  and  the 
splendid  lines  "to  the  pious  Memory  of  Mistress  Anne 
Killigrew,  excellent  in  the  two  sister  arts  of  poesy  and 
painting."  There  are  some  half  dozen  lyrics  in  the  plays 
adapted  to  other  themes  than  those  of  love,  a  hunting 
song,  a  song  of  jealousy,  a  charm  and  so  forth,  besides 
some  more  or  less  perfunctory  religious  verse  to  which 
the  term  lyric  may  indulgently  be  applied.  But,  in  gen- 
eral, by  Dryden's  time  a  lyric  had  come  to  signify  simply 
a  love-song,  now  languishing,  now  disdainful,  now  com- 
placent, now  satirical,  but  a  love-song  none  the  less;  nay 
worse,  if  passionate,  deteriorating  into  mere  animalism ;  if 
sentimental,  a  bauble  or  lure  in  the  frivolous  game  of  gal- 
lantry that  so  occupied  the  Merry  Monarch  and  his  too 
loyal  and  imitative  subjects.  Thus  one  of  the  songs  of 
Dryden's  opera.  King  Arthur,  1691,  begins  promisingly: 
"  Fairest  isle,  all  isles  excelling";  but  this  promise  degen- 
erates immediately  into  "swains  and  nymphs,"  "Venus" 
and  "Cyprian  groves,"  and  England,  we  find  "shall  be 
renowned  [merely]  for  love."  Of  another  incidental  love 
lyric  of  Dryden's  from  Cleomenes,  1692,  Professor  Saints- 
bury  enthusiastically  exclaims:  "The  song,  'No,  no,  poor 
suffering  heart,'  is  in  itself  a  triumphant  refutation  of 
those  who  deny  passion  and  tenderness  in  poetry  to  Dry- 


THE  LYRICAL  DECLINE  117 

den;  but  for  a  few  turns  of  phrase,  the  best  name  of  the 
Jacobean  age  might  have  signed  it."^  Thus  in  the  love 
lyric  Dryden,  the  first  poet  of  his  age,  even  at  his  best, 
only  approached,  after  all,  the  best  names  among  the 
Jacobeans. 

The  miscellanies  which  we  found  so  important  in  the 
earlier  age,  collecting  as  they  did  the  best  poetry  of  the 
time,  continued  in  popular  esteem  throughout  the  seven- 
teenth century.  One  of  the  most  characteristic  collec- 
tions of  the  kind  is  Wit's  Recreations,  first  published  in 
16-il  and  going  through  nearly  a  dozen  editions  before  the 
close  of  the  century.  In  its  various  forms  this  collected 
the  published  poems  of  Thomas  May,  Shirley,  Herrick, 
Waller,  Milton,  Sir  Edward  Sherburne,  and  many  other 
well-known  poets,  some  of  them  before  they  had  appeared 
elsewhere  in  print.  Other  miscellanies  ranging  between 
1G40  and  1G71  arc  Wit  Restored,  Wit's  Interpreter,  Wit  and 
Drollery,  The  Loyal  Garland,  and  the  popular  Mnsarum 
DelicuB.  But  in  quality  these  and  later  collections  by  no 
means  maintained  the  earlier  standards,  but  turned  from 
sentiment  and  genuine  poetry  to  admit  the  verse  of  satire 
and  wit,  the  humors  of  the  street  and  the  ribaldry  of  the 
tavern.  The  earlier  fashion  of  the  publication  of  song- 
books  likewise  continued  almost  to  the  end  of  the  cen- 
tury, and  in  tiie  hands  of  men  such  as  Henry  and  William 
Lawes,  Lanier,  Playford,  and  the  great  Dr.  Purcell,  the 
music  at  least  suffered  no  deterioration.   Among  these 

'  John  Dryden  s  Works,  cd.  Scott  and  Saintabury,  Edinburgh, 
188ie,  VIII.  212. 


118  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

later  poets  who  may  have  written  exclusively  for  music, 
we  know  of  none,  however,  approaching  Campion.    To 
return  to  the  miscellany,  towards  the  close  of  the  century 
this  title  was  applied  to  a  somewhat  different  species  of 
publication;  for  example,  Cowley  so  entitled  a  section  of 
his  own  poems  in  the  edition  of  1656.   But  far  later  Dry- 
den  so  designated  certain  collections  of  poetry  by  him- 
self and  other  authors,  published  apparently  under  his 
supervision.  The  first  miscellany  of  Dryden,  called  Mis- 
cellany Poems,  appeared  in  1684 ;  the  second  with  the  addi- 
tional title  Sylvce  in  the  next  year.  The  last  to  which  he 
himself  contributed  was  the  fourth,  in  1694,  now  desig- 
nated the  Annual  Miscellany.  This  irregular  periodical 
was  by  no  means  confined  to  lyrical  poetry,  but  con- 
tained satire  and  translation  as  well.   Several  poets  of 
note  made  their  debut  in  its  pages;  among  them  was  Pope, 
who  contributed  his  pastorals  to  "the  sixth  part,"  1709. 
Returning  to  the  lyrical  poets  at  the  Restoration,  Shir- 
ley, the  last  of  the  great  Elizabethan  brotherhood  in  the 
drama,  died  of  exposure,  consequent,  it  is  said,  on  the  burn- 
ing of  his  house  in  the  great  London  fire  of  1666.    His 
octavo  volume  of  poetry,  1646,  was    doubtless  by  this 
time  as  forgotten  as  his  excellent  plays.   Cowley,  who 
died  in  the  next  year,  maintained  from  his  personal  re- 
pute a  longer  popularity;  but  his  benign  and  ornate  muse 
was  out  of  fashion  in  these  newer  days  of  the  return  of  the 
king,  son  to  that  queen  whom  Cowley  had  so  faithfully 
served.   As  to  other  poets,  the  old-fashioned  cavalier.  Cot- 
ton, with  his  unaffected  love  of  nature  was  nearly  as  de 


THE  LYRICAL  DECLINE  119 

irop  as  the  Puritan  belligerent  satirists,  Wither  and  Mar- 
vel!, and  in  none  of  these  did  song  continue  far  into  the 
new  age.  An  interesting  minor  poet,  who  began  to  write 
with  Dryden  immediately  preceding  the  Restoration,  is 
Thomas  Flatman,  better  known  to  his  age  as  a  painter 
of  miniatures.  Flatman  is  a  disciple  of  Cowley,  and  lie 
never  succeeded  in  acquiring  the  mannerisms  of  the  new 
age.  He  thinks  for  himself,  and  in  some  of  his  irregular 
odes  —  a  form  that  he  acquired  from  his  master  —  has 
left  behind  him  some  creditable  serious  poetry.  "The 
Matchless  Orinda,"  whose  folio  volume  appeared  in  16G7, 
three  years  after  her  death,  belongs  here  too.  Orinda 
was  in  plain  life  Mistress  Katherine  Philips,  born  Fowler, 
and  a  native  of  Cardigan.  There  she  and  her  husband 
formed  a  little  literary  coterie,  in  which  the  members  as- 
sumed fanciful  names  after  a  fashion  prevalent  in  the  ro- 
mantic novels  of  the  day.  Philips  was  known  as  Antenor, 
Katherine,  as  Orinda;  the  admiration  of  friends  added 
the  flattering  adjective  "matchless."  Orinda  was  not  un- 
known to  literary  London,  and  Cowley,  Orrery,  and  Flat- 
man  approved  her.  Tier  poetry,  which  is  fluent  rather 
than  musical  or  thoughtful,  is  taken  up  largely  with  ex- 
aggerated praises  of  friendship,  and  her  fame  during  her 
day  was  greater  than  her  deserts. 

And  now  the  world  was  free  to  the  new  poets,  the  satel- 
lites of  I)ry(l(;n:  BuLlcr,  Oldham,  Ilosconuiiou,  Orrery, 
Etheredge,  the  satirists,  translators,  dramatists,  and  oc- 
casional i)0('ts  of  the  Ilestorution  — who  docs  not  know 
their  names  and  how  "the  glorious  John"  overtops  their 


120  ^  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

mediocrity  and  what  is  often  less  than  mediocrity,  where 
poetry  (not  mere  wit,  burlesque,  and  ribaldry)  is  the  mat- 
ter in  question.  Among  these  "holiday  writers,"  as  Pope 
afterwards  called  them,  only  Charles  Sackville  Earl  of 
Dorset,  John  Wilmot  Earl  of  Rochester,  and,  somewhat 
later.  Sir  Charles  Sedley,  can  be  described  as  lyrists  of 
rank;  and  they,  in  a  sense,  carried  onward  to  a  restricted, 
though  equally  choice,  development  the  vers  de  societe  of 
Carew  and  Waller.  The  lives  and  dissipations  of  these 
gentlemen  of  quality  are  singularly  alike  and  signally  re- 
presentative of  their  gay  and  abandoned  age.  Dorset 
was  the  eldest,  and  he  longest  survived.  He  is  described 
by  Horace  Walpole  as  "the  finest  gentleman  in  the  volup- 
tuous court  of  Charles  II  and  in  the  gloomy  one  of  King 
William."  His  lyrics  are  found  only  in  collections  and 
miscellanies.  He  disdained  publication.  Dorset's  famous 
song,  "To  all  you  ladies  now  at  land,"  bears  the  date 
1665.  Rochester,  who  died  at  thirty -two,  a  ruined  de- 
bauchee, left  behind  him,  besides  the  most  exquisite  lyrics 
of  his  school,  printed  verses,  the  ribaldry  and  brutality 
of  which  remain  unexampled  in  any  literature  or  age.  As 
to  Sedley,  he  was  a  more  prudent,  a  less  ungenerous,  if 
not  a  less  profligate  man.  Bishop  Burnet  thus  distin- 
guished Sedley  from  his  fellows :  "  He  was  not  so  correct 
as  Lord  Dorset  nor  so  sparkling  as  Lord  Rochester." 
Sedley  appears  to  have  become  somewhat  less  frivolous 
at  the  Revolution.  He  took  sides  against  his  masters,  the 
Stuarts,  whether  from  any  political  conviction  or  from  a 
private  grudge  is  a  matter  into  which  we  need  not  here 


THE  LYRICAL  DECLINE  121 

inquire.  The  lyrical  poetry  of  this  group,  with  John 
SheflBeld  Duke  of  Buckinghamshire,  Sir  George  Etheredge, 
the  dramatist.  Mistress  Aphara  Behn,  Lansdowne  and 
some  others,  is  purely  that  of  amorous  gallantry;  its  very 
mask  and  domino  of  names  —  Chloris,  Celia,  Dorinda, 
Phyllis,  and  the  rest  —  proclaim  it  such ;  as  does  its  vocab- 
ulary of  hyperbole,  its  "charms"  and  "darts,"  its  "pas- 
sions" and  its  "flames."  Even  the  honesty  of  its  cyni- 
cism is  to  be  mistrusted,  and  the  whole  imaginary  world 
that  it  created  is  only  a  flimsy  and  would-be  polite  fabric 
reared  on  a  basis  of  mere  animalism.  And  yet  the  best 
lyrics  of  these  poets  abound  in  wit,  happiness  of  phrase, 
delicacy  of  fancy,  and  charm  of  manner,  rising  occasion- 
ally to  passionate  lyrical  eloquence: 

Thou  art  my  life  —  if  thou  but  turn  away. 

My  Hfe'.s  a  thousand  deaths.  Thou  art  my  way  — 

Without  thee,  love,  I  travel  not  but  stray. 

These  are  the  words  of  Rochester,  the  most  fervid  stanza 
of  a  poem,  "  To  his  Mistress,"  that  breathes  passion  from 
beginning  to  end.  More  in  accord  with  the  average  excel- 
lence of  this  group  of  lyrists  are  these  stanzas  of  Sedley: 

'T  is  cruel  to  prolong  a  pain; 

And  to  defer  a  joy, 
Bflii-ve  me,  gentle  C'elemene, 

Oirends  tli<'  winged  boy. 

An  hundred  thousand  oaths  your  fears 

IVrhaps  would  not  remove; 
And,  if  I  gazed  a  thousand  years, 

I  could  no  deeper  love. 


122  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

Even  its  lesser  members  reach  excellence.  Aphara  Behn, 
that  interesting  earliest  example  in  our  literature  of  a 
woman  earning  her  living  by  writing,  has  left  at  least  one 
song  of  enduring  beauty, "  Love  in  fantastic  triumph  sat "  ; 
other  songs  of  hers  are  scarcely  inferior.  Considering 
what  was  to  come  after,  lyrically,  it  is  not  too  much  to 
agree  with  Professor  Saintsbury,  that  the  poetry  of  this 
coterie  of  Dryden's  contemporaries  is  "memorable  as  the 
last  echoes  of  the  marvellous  song  concert  of  the  first  half 
of  the  century.  After  the  death  of  Dryden  and  of  Sedley, 
in  1700  and  1701,  a  hundred  years  passed  without  any- 
thing like  them." 

There  was  more  serious  if  less  lyrically  effective  poetry 
in  the  age  of  Dryden;  though  most  of  it  must  be  sought  for 
deep  in  the  works  of  forgotten  poets  or  found,  rescued,  as 
some  of  it  has  been,  in  treasuries  of  minor  poetry  such  as 
those  of  Dodsley  or  Churton  Collins.*  Thus  Bishop  Henry 
King,  who  survived  the  Restoration  nine  years,  amused 
himself  with  poetry  throughout  a  long  life  and  wrote 
unequally,  if  always  at  ease,  on  subjects  serious  and  triv- 
ial. Much  abused  Richard  Flecknoe,  too,  victim  with 
absolutely  unlyrical  Shad  well  of  Dryden's  deadly  satire, 
has  been  found  lyrically  quotable  by  the  late  Mr.  Collins 
in  two  thoughtful  little  poems.  In  the  forgotten  Odes  of 
John  Oldham,  chiefly  remembered  for  his  satires  on  the 
Jesuits,  will  be  found  a  dignity  of  bearing  not  unworthy 

^  Dodsley,  A  Collection  of  Poetry  in  six  volumes  by  several  hands,  1758; 
Collins,  A  Treasury  of  Minor  British  Poetry,  1896;  Caroline  Poets,  ed. 
Saintsbury.  1910. 


THE  LYRICAL  DECLINE  123 

of  his  master,  Cowley;  and  the  difficult  style  of  John 
Norris  of  Bemerton  conceals  at  times,  in  the  mysticism 
of  its  Platonic  and  religious  ponderings,  things  of  the  es- 
sence of  poetry.  It  is  pleasant  to  thmk  of  excellent  Sir 
Thomas  Browne,  writing  verses  as  a  "dormitive  I  take 
to  bedward,"  the  easy  manner  and  placid  wisdom  of 
which  will  not  so  affect  his  readers.  Lastly,  for  amends 
to  Waller,  whose  long  life  closed  in  16S7,  only  a  little  more 
than  a  decade  before  that  of  Dryden,  let  us  recall  the 
noblest  of  his  poems,  the  reputed  last  lines  that  he  wrote: 

The  seas  are  quiet  when  the  winds  giv'e  o'er ; 
So,  calm  are  we  when  passions  are  no  more. 
For  then  we  know  how  vain  it  was  to  boast 
Of  fleeting  things,  so  certain  to  be  lost. 
Clouds  of  affection  from  our  younger  eyes 
Conceal  that  emptiness  which  age  descries. 

The  soul's  dark  cottage,  battered  and  decayed. 

Lets  in  new  light  through  chinks  that  time  hath  made; 

Stronger  by  weakness,  wiser  men  become. 

As  tlicy  draw  near  to  their  eternal  home. 

Iy<'av'ing  the  old,  both  worlds  at  once  they  view. 

That  stand  upon  the  threshold  of  the  new. 

In  the  years  of  transition  from  the  rule  of  Dryden 
to  the  rule  of  Pope,  two  poets  of  genuine  lyrical  quality 
appeared.  These  were  Prior  and  Congrcve.  William  Con- 
grcve  in  a  way  continued  the  lyric  of  gallantry,  as  under- 
stood and  written  by  Rochester  and  Sedlcy,  but  with  a 
more  controlled  and  epigrammatic  grace.  Congreve  is 
best  nMiiciiibcrcd  for  his  brilliant  coriicdics  of  manners, 
so  brilliant  indeed  and  ablaze  with  wit  that  they  misre- 


124  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

present,  in  this  respect  at  least,  the  Hfe  which  they  were  in- 
tended to  portray.  Wit  is  Ukewise  the  inspiring  quahty  of 
the  small  number  of  short  lyrical  or  epigrammatic  pieces 
that  Congreve  has  left  us.  This  wit  is  daring,  even  mechante 
at  times,  but  every  stroke  tells,  and  every  stroke  is  within 
the  rules  of  the  game;  for  "the  splendid  Congreve,"  the 
Beau  Brummel  of  his  day,  is  ever  polished  to  the  nail. 
Matthew  Prior,  though  he  too  wrote  lyrics  in  the  approved 
manner  of  the  same  school,  broadened  the  scope  of  vers  de 
societe  in  subject-matter  and  by  the  infusion  into  it  of  a 
species  of  bonhomie,  sentiment,  and  humor  conspicuously 
at  variance  with  the  prevalent  aridity  of  the  age  of  wit 
and  reason.  Prior  was  a  good  scholar  and  an  accomplished 
man  of  the  world.  He  had  risen,  in  the  diplomatic  service, 
to  the  post  of  ambassador  to  France,  and  appears  to  have 
been  deeply  involved  in  the  intrigues  that  sought  to  restore 
the  Stuarts  to  the  English  throne  on  the  death  of  Queen 
Anne.  His  poems,  published  in  1709,  include  much  quasi- 
satirical  and  occasional  verse  which  need  not  concern  us; 
for  Prior  is  not  memorable  for  his  dull  Pindaric  welcome 
to  William  of  Orange  or  for  his  modernization  (and  spoiling 
in  the  process)  of  the  admirable  old  ballad  of  "The  Nut 
Brown  Maid."  Prior's  title  to  fame  rests  on  less  portent- 
ous matters.  It  may  be  a  parody  on  Boileau's  pompous 
and  complacent  "Ode  on  the  taking  of  Namour,"  it  may 
be  in  lines  of  mock  gallantry  and  the  tenderest  of  senti- 
ment to  a  "child  of  quality,"  or  in  verses  whimsically 
conceived  for  his  own  monument,  —  in  all  we  have  the 
easy  humanity,  keen  insight  under  a  frivolity  of  manner. 


THE  LYRICAL  DECLINE  125 

kindliness  of  spirit  and  quickness  of  apprehension  that 
belong  to  the  man  of  the  world,  expressed  with  a  simplicity 
and  gay  charm  of  manner  that  is  inimitable  and  unap- 
proached.  His  version  of  Hadrian's  famous  lines  "To  his 
Soul"  has  more  than  its  dainty  wit  to  recommend  it;  it 
marks  the  height  at  times  attainable  in  this  charming 
species  of  the  lyrical  art,  one  in  which  only  Praed,  Lan- 
dor,  Dobson,  and  a  few  others  were  to  equal  their  master. 
Prior. 

Poor  little,  pretty,  fluttering  thing. 

Must  we  no  longer  live  together  ? 
And  dost  thou  prune  thy  trembling  wing. 

To  take  thy  flight  thou  know'st  not  whither  ? 

Thy  humorous  vein,  thy  pleasing  folly 

Lie  all  neglected,  all  forgot: 
And  pensive,  wavering,  melancholy. 

Thou  drcad'st  and  hop'st  thou  know'st  not  what. 

It  is  noteworthy  in  Prior  that  he  preferred  for  his  lighter 
pieces  measures  which  departed  as  widely  as  possible  from 
the  tyranny  of  the  rimed  couplet.  He  dared  to  use  the 
anapestic  trimeter  with  an  ease  and  skill  not  equalled  by 
Dryden,  whom  he  followed  in  this  respect;  and,  even  in 
the  conventional  lyric  of  love,  "Cloe  and  Euphelia," 
"Cloe,  how  blubbered  is  that  pretty  face,"  or  "The  Ques- 
tion to  Lizette,"  contrived  to  do  the  old  thing  in  a  charm- 
ing new  way. 

And  now  we  reach  the  famous  age  of  Queen  Anne,  the 
ascendancy  of  Pope  and  tiie  coiifirniod  rule  of  the  heroic 
couplet,  the  metrical  enemy  of  lyricism.    It  is  amazing 


126  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

how  small  a  figure  Pope  cuts  when  the  question  concerns 
the  lyric.  The  spirit  of  song  was  as  foreign  to  him  as  the 
grotto  at  Twickenham,  with  its  "decorations  of  sparkling 
shells  and  minerals,"  was  foreign  to  nature.  And  yet  to 
judge  Pope  for  the  absence  of  a  quality,  the  negation  of 
which  made  him  in  some  respects  the  man  and  the  author 
that  he  was,  would  be  as  unfair  as  the  satisfied  pronounce- 
ment of  the  romanticists  which  denies  to  Pope  any  place 
within  the  domains  of  Parnassus.  In  the  fair  house  of 
poetry  are  many  mansions  and,  however  remote  from  the 
soul  of  lyricism  may  be  the  artificiality,  the  rhetoric,  the 
specific  application,  and  the  antithetical  balance  of  this 
great  artificer  in  wit,  Pope  has  his  place  even  among  poets, 
if  not  among  lyrists,  for  his  delicate  fancy,  for  his  occa- 
sional insight,  and  for  his  power  of  crystallizing  thought  in 
admirable  metrical  form.  In  deference  to  all  this,  the 
anthologies  of  lyrical  poetry  reprint  Pope's  epigram  "On 
a  certain  Lady  at  Court,"  his  "Elegy  to  the  Memory  of 
an  Unfortunate  Lady,"  and  the  least  unlyrical  of  all  his 
poetry,  "The  Dying  Christian  to  his  Soul,"  Hadrian's 
"Animula  vagula,  hlandula"  once  more,  already  better 
done  by  Prior: 

Vital  spark  of  heav'nly  flame! 
Quit,  O  quit  this  mortiU  frame. 
Trembling?,  hopinj?,  llng'ring,  flying, 
O  the  pain  and  bliss  of  dying! 

Surely  only  the  sanction  of  a  great  name  and  other  less 
questionable  achievement  could  justify  the  inclusion  of 
these  mediocre  rhetorical  lines  in  any  category  lyrical. 


THE  LYRICAL  DECLINE  127 

Somewhat  better  are  the  much  quoted  verses,  "Happy 
the  man  whose  wish  and  care."  But  the  patent  masquer- 
ading of  the  last  stanza,  "Thus  let  me  live  unseen,  un- 
known," from  the  lips  of  the  vainest  of  English  poets 
and  the  most  effectively  self -advertised,  forever  deprives 
"The  Contented  Man  "  of  any  place  among  genuine  lyrics. 
Admirable  master  of  extended  occasional  verse  that 
Pope  was,  he  was  not  successful  in  vers  de  societe  ;  he  was 
too  satirical  and  splenetic,  too  little  master  of  himself 
or  in  control  of  the  venom  of  his  tongue.  Mr.  Locker- 
Lampson  in  his  famous  collection,  Lyra  Elegantiarum, 
quotes  some  lines  of  Pope  "To  Mrs.  Martha  Blount  [the 
woman  that  he  loved]  sent  on  her  Birth-Day,"  and  others 
"To  Thomas  Southerne"  on  a  similar  occasion.  The  first 
reads  like  a  formal  toast,  tempered  with  obvious  religious 
sentiment;  the  latter  is  not  much  more  than  foolery.  The 
most  hopeless  thing  in  all  this  eighteenth-century  pro- 
priety of  mien  and  precision  is  its  complacence,  its  uncon- 
sciousness of  anything  beyond  or  above.  Even  its  humor 
it  took  au  serieux,  obsessed  with  the  belief  that  with  the 
death  of  the  then  King  (jcorge,  wit,  poetry,  criticism,  and 
the  arts  must  perish  ofl"  llic  oarlh. 

With  such  examples  of  the  lyrical  art,  what  could  lesser 
men  do?  It  may  be  aflirrncd  with  confidence  that  there  is 
not  a  lyrical  note  discoverable  among  the  Poi)eans  as  a 
school  that  does  not  as  materially  lessen  the  rank  of  its 
singer  as  a  follower  of  Pope  as  it  materially  raises  him  in 
our  estimation  as  a  true  poet.  Those  who  look  Poi)e  as 
their  only  guide  in  poetry  and  metrics  rose  no  higher  than 


128  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

to  places  in  Tonson,  Dodsley,  and  other  similar  collec- 
tions, unless,  like  Addison  and  Swift,  to  them  poetry  was 
merely  a  diversion.  Addison's  well-known  hymn,  "The 
spacious  firmament  on  high,"  deserves  a  dignified  respect; 
as  to  Swift,  while  the  curt  verdict  of  his  kinsman,  Dryden, 
"Cousin  Swift,  you  will  never  be  a  poet,"  is  not  to  be  con- 
tradicted, there  is,  none  the  less,  a  playful  fancy  and  a  real 
tenderness  in  many  of  the  verses  included  in  The  Journal 
to  Stella  (where,  be  it  remembered,  the  real  Swift  dis- 
closed himself)  unpublished  and  undivulged  until  time 
had  laid  away  both  of  these  unhappy  lovers  in  the  grave. 

Stella,  say,  what  evil  tongue 
Reports  you  are  no  longer  young; 
That  Time  sits  with  his  scythe  to  mow 
Where  erst  sat  Cupid  with  his  bow; 
That  half  your  locks  are  turned  to  grey? 
I'll  ne'er  believe  a  word  they  say. 
'T  is  true,  but  let  it  not  be  known. 
My  eyes  are  somewhat  dimmish  grown; 
For  Nature,  always  in  the  right. 
To  your  decay  adapts  my  sight; 
And  wrinkles  undistinguish'd  pass. 
For  I'm  ashamed  to  use  a  glass; 
And  till  I  see  them  with  these  eyes. 
Whoever  says  you  have  them,  lies. 

Among  those  who  wore  their  Pope  with  a  difference  was 
Henry  Carey,  who  lives  for  one  piece,  a  ballad-like  lyric  in 
happy  lover's  prattle,  "Sally  in  our  Alley,"  a  poem  alto- 
gether natural  and  charming.  Here,  too,  belongs  amiable 
John  Gay,  who  could  do  anything  cleverly,  if  he  was  only 
set  to  do  it  and  was  not  overtaken  by  his  incurable  indol- 


THE  LYRICVL  DECLINE  129 

ence  in  the  process.  It  was  Gay  that  was  set  upon  Am- 
brose Philips  by  Pope  because  Philips  had  the  impertin- 
ence to  write  pastorals  at  a  time  when  Pope  was  engaged 
in  the  same  occupation.  The  result  was  The  Shepherd's 
Week,  a  parody  of  the  degenerate  pastoralists  of  the  day, 
characterized  by  much  freshness  of  spirit.  The  mock- 
heroics  of  Trivia,  the  Art  of  Walking  the  Streets  of  London, 
the  pleasing  Fables  and  the  prodigiously  successful  Beg- 
gars' Opera,  all  are  illustrations  of  the  same  trait.  The 
songs  of  the  last  and  of  Polly,  Gay's  other  "opera,"  are 
trivial;  but  other  lyrics  of  Gay  —  among  them  *"T  was 
when  the  seas  were  roaring,"  "O  ruddier  than  a  cherry" 
from  Ads  and  Galatea  (which  Handel  set  to  music),  the 
"Song  to  Phillida,"  and  "Black-eyed  Susan,"  —  live  in 
anthologies  of  our  English  song  for  their  musical  quality 
and  their  easy  verse.  And  yet,  as  compared  with  the  genu- 
ine lyric  of  earlier  and  later  times,  could  anything  be  more 
preposterous  and  untrue  to  nature  than  this  last  much 
lauded  song?  This  impossible  young  woman,  "black-eyed 
Susan,"  comes  aboard  a  ship,  exclaiming  in  the  manner  of 
modern  "musical  comedy," 

O!  where  .shall  I  my  true  love  find  ? 

Tell  me,  ye  joviiil  sailors,  tell  me  true. 

If  my  sweet  William  sails  amon^  the  crew  ? 

Whereupon  William,  who  is  "high  u{)on  the  yard"  which 
is  "rocked  with  the  billows  to  and  fro"  notwithstanding 
that  the  ship  is  still  at  anfhor  in  the  Downs,  "sighed  and 
cast  his  eyes  below,"  following  ininicdiiitcly  himself.  In 
the  dialogue  that  follows,  William  gallantly  asks  permis- 


130  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

sion  to  "kiss  off  that  falling  tear,"  compares  Susan's  eyes 
to  diamonds  and  her  skin  to  ivory.  This  production, 
which  Palgrave  at  some  nodding  moment  included  in 
his  Golden  Treasury  of  English  Songs  and  Lyrics,  con- 
cludes: 

The  boatsman  gave  the  dreadful  word. 
The  sails  their  swelling  bosoms  spread. 
No  longer  must  she  stay  aboard; 
They  kissed,  she  sighed,  he  hung  his  head. 
Her  lessening  boat  unwilling  rows  to  land; 
Adieu!  she  cried,  and  waved  her  lily  hand. 

Here  the  lyric  expires  in  rhetoric,  improbable  narrative, 
and  perverted  realism. 

Thomas  Parnell,  an  older  man  than  Pope,  was  born  in 
Dublin  in  1679,  and  only  swung  late  into  the  latter's 
powerful  orbit.  Some  of  Parnell's  Songs  (such,  for  instance, 
as  the  one  beginning  "When  thy  Beauty  appears")  pre- 
serve a  freedom  of  metrical  cadence  and  phrasing  quite 
unusual  in  his  time.  His  "Night  Piece  on  Death"  has 
been  praised  for  its  "nature-painting,"  and  his  "Hymn 
to  Contentment,"  for  its  freedom  in  the  employment  of 
trochaic  substitutions  in  an  iambic  measure,  similar  to  the 
same  so  effectively  used  by  Milton.  Even  more  marked 
than  Parnell's  departures  from  current  poetical  conven- 
tions were  those  of  Edward  Young,  also  an  older  man 
than  Pope  and  actually  a  predecessor  of  Pope's  in  that 
special  form  of  satire  which  Pope  made  his  owm.  But 
there  is  little  that  is  lyrical  in  Young's  famous  Night 
Thoughts,  with  its  strain  of  elegiac  and  rhetorical  moral- 


THE  LYRICAL  DECLINE  131 

izing  in  admirable  blank  verse,  and  its  air  of  theatrical 
gloom,  which  however  effectively  tragic  in  its  age,  begets 
in  ours  a  wholesome  and  alleviating  spirit  of  levity.  It  was 
Wordsworth  that  excepted  "The  Nocturnal  Reverie"  of 
Anne  Finch,  Countess  of  Winchilsea,  from  his  universal 
denunciation  of  English  poetry  from  Paradise  Lost  to 
Thomson's  Seasons  as  not  containing  "a  single  new  image 
of  external  nature."  This  famous  deliverance  is  an  exag- 
geration, to  be  sure,  but  an  exaggeration  founded  on  the 
recognition  of  a  general  truth.  Lady  Winchilsea,  who  died 
in  1720,  some  sixty  years  of  age,  began  under  the  prevail- 
ing poetic  influence  of  her  youth,  that  of  Cowley;  but  her 
taste  and  the  circumstances  of  her  life  turned  her  to  nature 
rather  than  to  books  for  her  imagery;  and,  while  the  lyr- 
ical spirit  is  in  no  wise  peculiarly  hers,  the  freshness  and 
naturalness  of  her  ideas  and  illustrations  is  veritably  an 
clement  noticeable  in  the  reaction  soon  to  set  in  towards  a 
more  salutary  conception  of  poetry. 

Critics  have  been  prone  to  take  the  flourishing  of  the  ^ 
sonnet  as  a  criterion  of  the  presence  in  our  English  lit- 
erary history  of  the  qualities  that  mark  the  soul  of  poetry. 
Certain  it  is  that  the  sonnet  burst  into  a  blossoming 
springtime  with  Shakespeare,  sensibly  declined,  as  in 
summer,  under  Elizal)eth's  successors,  and,  prolonging  its 
late  bloom  into  a  glorious  autumn  witii  Milton,  came  to 
the  silence  of  winter  from  Commonwealth  times  to  nearly 
a  centurj'  later.  Mr.  Gossc  once  noted  that  William  Walsh, 
who  died  in  1708,  "is  the  author  of  the  only  sonnet  writ- 
ten in  English  between  Milton's,  in  1C58,  and  Warton's, 


132  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

in  1750."  ^  And  this  is  substantially  true  if  we  except  two 
sonnets  of  Benjamin  Stillingfleet  (1G35-1699),  culled  for 
one  of  the  sonnet  anthologies  and  probably  written  much 
about  the  time  of  that  of  Walsh.  ^  With  Gray  and  Thomas 
W^arton  the  sonnet  revived.  It  was  suitable  to  the  medi- 
tative spirit  of  Cowper,  and  it  is  a  matter  of  wonder  that 
he  did  not  employ  it  more  frequently.  With  Elegiac 
Sonnets,  1784,  by  Charlotte  Smith,  and  Fourteen  Sonnets, 
five  years  later,  by  William  Lisle  Bowles,  the  custom  of 
sonnets  written  in  sequence  also  revived.  Both  of  these 
sonneteers  deserve  the  modest  place  that  they  still  hold 
in  anthologies,  and  it  is  not  an  accident  that  Bowles 
should  have  been  the  champion  of  "natural  poetry"  and 
the  assailant  of  Pope  in  later  years  with  Campbell  and 
Byron  as  his  opponents.  The  two  or  three  sonnets  of 
Burns  that  may  be  added  to  the  slender  number  written 
in  the  eighteenth  century,  possess  the  discreet  and  tem- 
pered graces  that  mark  the  sober  English  Burns  as  con- 
trasted with  the  Scottish  lyrist  drunk  with  the  madness  of 
his  native  song,'  It  may  be  remarked  that  Burns,  though 
he  caught  the  idea  of  the  included  rime,  failed  to  note  or 
at  least  to  observe  the  stricter  rules  of  the  sonnet.  As  the 
sonnets  of  Bowles  are  in  precisely  the  same  form,  it  may 
be  assumed  that  Burns  was  practising  what  to  him  was  a 
new  and  polite  English  art,  not  essaying  the  revival  of  an 

1  Ward's  English  Poets,  in,  p.  7. 

*  S.  Waddington,  English  Sonnets  by  Poets  of  the  Past,  1888,  pp.  52, 53. 
'  See  "On  Hearing  a  Thrush  Sing,"  1793,  and  "On  the  Death  of 
Robert  Riddle,"  1791. 


THE  LYRICAL  DECLINE  133 

instrument  of  poetic  expression  hallowed  by  the  usages 
of  the  past. 

To  go  back  to  the  more  general  reaction  that  set  the 
current  of  English  poetry  slowly  in  motion  on  its  return- 
ing flood,  we  must  turn  to  James  Thomson,  the  true 
coryphseus  of  the  movement  with  his  Seasons,  written  in 
blank  verse,  and  his  Castle  of  Indolence  in  Spenserian 
stanza.  The  Scottish  birth  of  Thomson  and  his  coming  up 
to  London  only  after  his  poetical  tastes  had  been  formed, 
removed  him  measurably  from  the  weight  and  authority 
of  the  urban  school  of  Pope.  With  that  almost  infallible 
power  of  observation  which  was  his,  an  innate  love  of  the 
country  and  of  our  older  poetry,  especially  Spenser's,  it 
is  not  to  be  wondered  that  Thomson,  whose  poetry  was 
enormously  popular  in  his  day,  set  up  a  kind  of  imperium 
in  imperio  and  exercised  a  wholesome  influence  on  public 
taste  in  this  attitude  of  protest  against  the  urban  school. 
And  yet  as  we  read  Thomson  to-day,  with  a  becoming 
salute  to  "  Rule,  Britannia! "  how  fully  he  seems  to  us  to 
share  the  virtuous  attitudinizing,  the  moral  platitudes, 
and  the  artificial  rhetorical  devices  which  were  tlic  ac- 
cepted poetical  canons  of  his  age.  Among  the  poets  that 
group  immediately  with  Thomson,  Dyer  with  his  Gron- 
gar  Hill  is  contained  well  within  the  superficies  of  The 
iScasons,  as  Blair  with  his  funereal  Grave,  is  comprised 
witliin  the  ampler  limits  of  '^'oung's  Night  Thoughts. 
Shcnstone  imitates  the  Spenserian  manner  in  his  School- 
mistress as  Thomson  really  did  a  lilllc  after  him.  Indeed 
Shenstone  compasses  some  poetry  which,  however  scnti- 


134  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

mental  and  artificial,  occasionally  approaches  the  lyrical. 
He  is  not  unmusical  or  wholly  repetitious  in  thought.  As 
to  the  rest  lyrically,  including  Thomson,  the  least  said  is 
the  soonest  mended.  The  spirit  of  song  and  the  poetic 
subjective  sincerity  was  no  more  in  them  than  in  the  verse 
of  Pope,  Swift,  or  Addison,  although  the  want  seems  less  a 
drying  up  of  the  poetic  life-springs  than  their  difiFusion 
and  dilution  into  something  of  another  kind. 

With  Collins  and  Gray,  whose  work  was  printed,  almost 
all  of  it,  within  the  decade  of  1740  to  1750,  the  lyrical 
spirit  revives,  for  both  have  left  poetry  which  claims  for 
itself  a  place  above  that  which  we  accord  to  those  who 
merely  illustrate  their  time.  Collins's  life  was  short  and  it 
ended  in  insanity;  but  his  reputation  as  a  poet  was  made 
long  before  that  malign  catastrophe  and  rests  almost 
wholly  on  his  Odes,  most  of  them  addressed  to  abstrac- 
tions such  as  Peace,  Fear,  Pity,  Mercy,  and  the  like.  If 
Thomson  took  Spenser  for  his  model  and  inspiration, 
Collins  chose  Milton,  the  Milton  of  "L' Allegro"  and 
"  Comus."  Nor  does  he  fall  far  short  of  his  example  in  the 
limpid  clarity  of  his  diction,  the  chaste  restraint  of  his 
figures,  his  fondness  for  abstractions  personified  and  for 
the  music  of  classical  proper  names.  The  "Dirge  for 
Cymbeline,"  "The  Ode  to  Simplicity,"  "The  Ode  to 
Evening"  and  several  more  belong  in  the  category  of 
great  English  poetry;  for,  even  with  inequality  and  a 
certain  preciosity  somewhat  difficult  to  endure  for  those 
who  have  gone  through  romanticism  and  beyond,  Collins 
would  have  been  a  notable  poet  in  any  age,  perhaps  a 


THE  LYRICAL  DECLINE  105 

hundred  years  earlier,  a  very  great  one.  And  what  is  said 
here  of  Collins  is  measurably  true  of  Gray,  whose  restraint, 
fastidiousness,  and  impatience  of  anything  but  perfection 
have  left  him  the  author  of  few,  but  of  very  choice  poems 
in  the  kind  of  thing  that  he  set  out  to  do.  The  universality 
of  poems  such  as  the  famous  "Elegy  written  in  a  Coun- 
try Churchyard,"  which  has  usurped  to  itself  the  designa- 
tion of  a  whole  class  of  poems,  the  equally  wide  appeal  of 
the  "Ode  on  the  Prospect  of  Eton,"  these  are  things  to  be 
reckoned  with  even  if,  like  Charles  Lamb,  with  respect  to 
the  soliloquy  "To  be  or  not  to  be,"  we  have  long  since  lost 
any  power  to  discern,  unaided  by  their  repute,  whether 
they  contain  poetry  good,  bad,  or  indifferent.  It  was 
Matthew  Arnold's  idea  that  Gray  was  larger  than  his 
work,  that  he  was  one  who  might  have  done  poetically 
almost  anything,  but  that  "he  never  spoke  out."  ^  Could 
a  man  so  scholarly,  so  academic,  a  man  who  so  paused  at 
sentiment,  as  he  paltered  at  the  picturesque  in  nature, 
ever  have  reached  the  passion  that  is  within  or  the  pas- 
sion for  things  without?  Nothing  could  be  more  admir- 
able than  the  poetry  of  Gray  —  witness  the  great  Pin- 
daric odes,  "The  Bard  "  and  "The  Progress  of  Poesy"  — 
sentiment,  style,  versification,  all  is  sincere,  brilliant  at 
times,  and  absolutely  finished.  Some  of  the  phrases  we 
cannot  help  getting  by  heart:  "Youth  on  the  prow  and 
Pleasure  at  the  helm , "  "  The  boast  of  h  orald  ry ,  the  pomp  of 
power,"  "Contemplation's  sober  eye,"  "  the  rosy  bosomed 
Hours,"  and  many  more:  we  have  always  heard  them 
*  Essays  in  Criticism,  Second  Scries,  cd.  1900,  p.  01). 


136  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

quoted  and  always  heard  them  praised.  Yet  we  are  un- 
satisfied and  a  little  impatient  and,  like  the  discontented 
Athenian  citizen,  would  like  to  cast  a  black  ballot  for 
this  impeccable  Aristides,  if  we  dared.  As  to  the  lesser 
men,  Gray's  contemporaries,  Byrom,  Savage,  Armstrong, 
Mason,  Falconer,  the  laureate  Whitehead,  the  Wartons, 
and  Churchill,  where  in  their  dreary  wastes  as  spread  by 
Dodsley,  do  we  find  one  lyric  flower  not  of  paper  and 
tinsel?  In  the  Odes  of  Akenside  (best  in  his  "Hymn  to  the 
Naiads"),  there  is  an  approach  to  lyrical  expression  at 
times  not  far  short  of  Collins  when  not  quite  at  his  best; 
in  "  The  Minstrel"  of  Beattie,  there  is  a  modest  yearning 
after  "the  Gothic,"  as  the  mild  approaches  to  romanti- 
cism in  the  latter  eighteenth  century  were  called.  The 
hymns  of  Watts,  and  more  especially  those  of  John  and 
Charles  Wesley,  deserve  the  respect  that  honest  devo- 
tional effort  (even  when  versified)  should  properly  inspire; 
and  in  view  of  what  followed,  the  interest  in  old  poetry, 
especially  balladry,  which  now  revived  in  the  publica- 
tions of  Allan  Ramsay,  in  Percy  and  his  Reliques,  1765, 
with  Thomas  Warton's  excellent  History  of  English 
Poetry,  1774,  came  to  react  before  long  on  the  lyric  as 
well  as  on  other  poetry.  And  yet  verily  our  sympathy 
can  not  but  go  out  to  Dr.  Johnson  who  frankly  abided,  in 
the  verses  he  wrote,  by  the  Musa  pedestris  of  Pope,  and 
to  Goldsmith  who  did  nearly  the  same,  but  for  a  certain 
elegiac  and  moralizing  deviation,  exemplified  in  the  "De- 
serted Village,"  which  he  caught  of  Thomson  and  justi- 
fied by  doing  better  in  his  own  way. 


THE  LYRICAL  DECLINE  137 

When  the  romanticist  reverts  to  the  eighteenth  century 
—  or  what  is  more  likely  animadverts  upon  it  —  he  can 
discover  only  two  poets,  Christopher  Smart  and  Thomas 
Chatterton;  the  rest,  save  of  course  for  Blake,  are  ana- 
thema. Smart,  otherwise  no  more  than  a  literary  hack 
who  latterly  went  mad,  is  memorable  for  one  lyric  of  gen- 
uine fervor,  the  "Song  of  David."  There  are  no  verses 
so  nearly  dithyrambic  from  Crashaw  to  Shelley,  account 
for  them  how  we  may,  with  the  critics,  as  the  genius  of 
madness,  or  with  Mr.  Symons,  as  the  madness  of  genius. 
Here  are  two  stanzas  from  this  remarkable  poem: 

Strong  is  the  lion  —  like  a  coal 
His  eyeball,  —  like  a  bastion's  mole 

His  che.st  against  the  foes: 
Strong  the  gier-cagle  on  his  sail; 
Strong  against  tide  th'  enormous  whale 

Emerges  as  he  goes. 

But  stronger  still,  in  earth  and  air. 
And  in  the  sea,  the  man  of  prayer. 

And  far  beneath  the  tide: 
And  in  the  seat  to  faith  iussignM, 
Where  ask  is  have,  where  seek  is  find. 

Where  knock  is  open  wide. 

Surely  these  are  strange  outbursts  for  the  sage  and  pro- 
per times  of  Gray,  Collins,  and  Dr.  Johnson.  Scarcely 
less  alien  is  Chatterton,  that  "marvellous  boy,"  who  took 
his  own  life  at  eighteen,  unknowing  that  his  portion  was 
to  be  fume  for  his  own  Jifliicvement  and  a  j)osifi()ii  most 
imi)ortant  as  afTcciing  tlie  future.  TIutc  was  a  brief  con- 
troversy, it  will  be  remembered,  about  the  lime  (»f  the 


138  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

poet's  death,  1770,  as  to  the  authenticity  of  the  poetry  of 
a  fifteenth-century  poet  named  "Thomas  Rowley"  whom 
Chatterton  pretended  that  he  had  discovered  in  the 
muniment  room  of  St.  Mary  Redcliffe,  Bristol.  But  the 
sources  of  Chatterton's  Middle  English,  the  processes  of 
its  manufacture,  as  of  his  inspiration,  have  long  since 
been  discovered,  and  everything  is  now  explained  except 
how  the  unlettered  boy  came  by  his  rare  anticipatory  ro- 
mantic genius.  Chatterton's  success  is  strangely  depend- 
ent on  his  own  archaized  and  invented  vocabulary,  and 
Professor  Skeat,  however  valuable  his  scholarly  labors,  has 
not  improved  the  poet  in  Chatterton  by  his  philological 
restorations.^  Chatterton's  may  have  been,  to  a  large 
degree  after  all,  the  precocious  promise  of  youth  which  is 
not  always  fulfilled.  And  yet  how  charming  lyrically  is 
iEUa's  "  Dirge,"  for  example,  and  with  what  simple  mate- 
rial is  it  all  accomplished.  With  Chatterton  music  returns 
to  the  English  lyric,  and  with  music  that  quality  of  atmos- 
phere, as  it  has  been  called,  in  which  the  romantic  appeal 
so  largely  subsists.  Whether  a  mature  Chatterton  could 
have  withstood  the  correctness  of  Gray  and  the  example 
of  Cowper  it  is  idle  to  inquire. 

In  the  estimate  of  such  a  poet  as  William  Cowper,  it  is 
well  to  remember  that  he  was  born  in  1731,  while  Pope 
had  yet  several  years  to  live,  and  that  Cowper 's  own 
poetical  activity,  confined  almost  to  the  decade  of  the 
eighties,  stretched  only  a  few  years  beyond  the  confident 
rule  of  that  most  confident  of  literary  potentates,  Dr. 
1  Skeat,  ed.  of  Chatterton,  1891. 


THE   LYRICAL  DECLINE  139 

Johnson.  In  Cowper,  therefore,  there  was  much  of  the 
old:  the  Popean  ideals  of  correctness  and  to  some  extent 
even  the  Popean  versification,  the  precision  and  pre- 
meditated elegance  of  the  diction  of  Gray,  and  a  Thom- 
sonian  objective  touch  with  nature  —  not  much  more, 
Cowper's  retired  and  uneventful  life,  enforced  by  his 
congenital  foe,  melancholia,  kept  his  poetry  tethered  to 
familiar  subjects;  but  while  he  descends  at  times  to  tri- 
vialities, the  strength  and  genuineness  of  his  feeling,  an- 
ticipating the  Wordsworth  ian  doctrine,  often  dignifies 
his  matter  so  as  to  lift  it  into  the  sphere  of  poetry.  In 
"My  Mar5%"  in  the  lines  "On  the  receipt  of  my  Mother's 
Picture,"  though  elegiac  rather  than  lyrical,  in  the  fine 
sonnet  to  Mary  Unwin,  and  elsewhere,  Cowper  makes 
clear  his  claim  to  his  place  among  the  great  English  poets; 
and  this  claim  rests,  above  all  other  things,  it  would  ap- 
pear, on  a  sincere  human  sentiment,  as  universal  as  it  is 
true  and  delicate,  wedded  to  an  unaffected  poetical  style 
that  again  and  again  reaches  the  simplicity  of  greatness. 
With  this  in  mind,  we  may  accept  "The  Task"  and  even 
the  "Olney  Hymns,"  though  we  need  not  read  them;  and 
we  may  accept,  too,  the  i)lejisantrics  of  the  critics  with 
the  designation  of  Cowper  as  "a  Pope  in  worsted  stock- 
ings unfoniin(nily  thick,"  remembering,  too,  that  "he 
stood  at  the  cross-roads  with  his  face  towards  the  heights 
of  Wordsworth." 

With  George  Crabbc  and  his  peculiar  and  very  cfTcct- 
ive  "criticism  of  life,"  whatever  his  j)lace  in  the  footway 
leading  to  romanticism,  we  have  nothing  to  do;  Crabbe's 


140  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

tongue  was  not  that  of  the  lyrist.  With  William  Blake, 
however,  we  are  not  only  on  the  very  threshold  of  the 
"bright  pavilions"  and  the  "charmed  magic  casements" 
of  the  romanticists,  but  we  have  to  reckon  with  one  whose 
earlier  medium  of  expression  is  possibly  more  purely  and 
undividedly  lyrical  than  that  of  any  other  English  poet. 
The  first  thing  to  remember  about  Blake  is  the  chrono- 
logy that  takes  him  back  into  the  alien  past.  Born  in 
1757,  two  years  before  Burns,  Blake  had  printed  his  vol- 
ume of  Poetical  Sketches  in  1783,  a  year  before  the  death 
of  Dr.  Johnson,  More  than  this,  the  poet  informs  us  that 
these  poems  were  written  between  his  twelfth  and  his 
twentieth  year,  that  is  between  1768  and  1777,  and  hence, 
some  of  them,  while  Gray  and  Goldsmith  were  yet  active 
and  before  the  poems  of  Chatterton  had  been  printed. 
The  Songs  of  Innocence  appeared  in  1789,  the  Songs  of 
Experience  in  1794,  three  years  before  Lyrical  Ballads. 
Thenceforward  Blake  departed  from  the  lyric  and  chose 
the  direct  symbolism  of  his  Prophetic  Books  as  his  mode 
of  poetical  expression.  We  may  therefore  say  that  the 
lyrical,  that  is  the  cogent  and  coherent  Blake,  whatever 
his  later  affinities,  belongs  wholly  in  point  of  time  to  the 
eighteenth  century.  It  has  been  said  that  Blake  would 
have  been  "a  liberty  boy"  in  the  days  of  the  Pharaohs, 
and  he  would  assuredly  have  sought  expression  in  the 
kindred  arts,  painting,  poetry,  and  music,  no  matter 
what  that  negligible  part  of  his  existence,  his  human  sur- 
roundings. And  yet  even  Blake  was  not  without  those 
literary  influences  that  start,  if  they  do  not  determine, 


THE   LYRICAL   DECLINE  141 

the  course  and  growth  of  genius.  Mr.  Symons  notes  the 
influence  upon  him  of  Ossian  which  appeared  in  1765. 
The  Ossianic  manner  is  more  noticeable  in  Blake's  later 
work  than  in  the  lyrics.  And  the  critic  notes,  too,  the 
touch  of  Blake  with  Chatterton  and  Elizabethan  song. 
"My  silks  and  fine  array"  is  pure  Elizabethan  and  an 
exquisite  song  that  neither  Jonson  nor  Fletcher  at  his 
best  need  have  disdained.  But  these  things,  with  some 
slighter  more  immediate  points  of  contact  with  conven- 
tional features  of  prevalent  poetic  style,  are  the  least  part 
of  Blake,  who  was  as  little  affected  by  his  surroundings 
poetical  as  he  was  by  the  opinions  and  the  manners  of  the 
people  he  knew.  Mr.  Symons  in  a  notable  passage  tells 
how  Blake  differs  in  his  lyricism  practically  from  all  other 
poets.  How  he  sings  not  of  love,  but  of  forgiveness,  not 
of  beauty  except  to  unmask  her  "soft  deceit  and  idleness," 
not  of  the  brotherhood  of  men,  but  of  the  cruelty,  the 
jealousy,  the  terror  that,  alas,  are  human.  "Ecstasy  in 
nature"  is  not  Blake's,  and  he  regarded  even  Wordsworth 
as  "a  kind  of  atheist,  who  mistook  the  changing  signs 
of  vegetable  nature  for  the  unchanging  realities  of  the 
imagination."  In  short,  "the  poetry  of  Blake  is  a  poetry 
of  the  mind,  abstract  in  substance,  concrete  in  form,  its 
passion  is  the  passion  of  the  imagination,  its  emotion  is 
the  emotion  of  thought,  its  beauty  is  the  beauty  of  the 
idea."' 

'  A.  Symons,  The  Romantic  Movement  in  English  Poetry,  1009, 
pp.  M,  4I{,  li  jxinirim.  Seo  also  the  Huine  aulhor'.s  <'xccll<'iit  Study  of 
Blake,  1007,  and  William  Blake,  by  B.  de  Scliucourt,  London.  1000. 


HZ  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

Farewell,  green  fields  and  happy  grove 
Where  flocks  have  took  delight: 

Where  lambs  have  nibbled,  silent  move 
The  feet  of  angels  bright. 


They  look  in  every  thoughtless  nest 

Where  birds  are  covered  warm; 
They  visit  caves  of  every  beast 

To  keep  them  from  all  harm. 

Nothing  could  be  more  impersonal.  There  is  in  all  this, 
as  in  Blake's  utter  disregard  of  human  figures  in  his 
poetry,  a  certain  likeness  to  the  abstractedness  of  Donne 
from  the  forms  of  the  world  and  from  all  theu*  physical 
manifestations.  But  the  likeness  ends  in  the  material. 
We  feel  of  Donne  that  he  has  passed  by  reading  and  con- 
tact with  men  through  the  world,  and  finding  it  vanity, 
has  turned  his  face  away  to  the  larger  v^erities  of  the  mind. 
Donne's  wisdom  is  the  wisdom  of  speculation  and  experi- 
ence; Blake's  the  innocence  of  childhood,  and  much  of 
his  charm  is  dependent  on  this  worldlessness,  if  we  may 
so  term  it.  Indeed,  Blake  is  quite  impervious  to  contam- 
ination by  actualities  or  facts;  to  him  the  idea  is  more 
truly  the  reality  than  to  any  other  English  writer,  and  it 
is  not  wonderful  that  he  should  have  so  wandered  from 
that  concreteness  and  condensity  (in  which  lyrical  success 
so  largely  subsists),  into  the  broken  music  and  the  flashes 
of  vision  of  his  later  mystical,  incoherent,  and  yet  remark- 
able Prophetic  Books. 

This  aloofness  from  other  men  and  the  poetry  of  other 
men,  these  flights  into  beatific  vision  and  rhapsodic 


THE   LYRICAL   DECLINE  143 

oracular  expression,  are  precisely  the  qualities  most 
remote  from  the  genius  of  Robert  Burns,  greatest  con- 
temporary of  Blake,  most  absolute  and  sovereign  lyrist 
of  the  entire  eighteenth  century.  For  the  richest  gift  of 
Burns,  next  to  his  incomparable  gift  of  song,  is  his  human- 
ity, the  finely  attuned  sympathy  that  put  him  into  intim- 
ate touch  not  only  wnth  nature  but  with  every  genuine 
human  emotion.  Though  born  a  cotter's  son  and  educated 
almost  literally  at  the  tail  of  a  plough,  Robert  Burns  was 
no  ordinary  peasant;  indeed,  it  may  be  doubted  if  the 
word  peasantry  ever  rightly  described  the  Scottish  tiller 
of  the  soil,  at  least  since  the  days  of  the  Reformation: 
and  the  Burnses  intellectually  were  above  their  class. 
In  Scotland,  unlike  England,  there  has  existed  for  cent- 
uries a  traditional  poetry,  at  times  crystalHzed  in  the 
written  word,  more  frequently  a  flotsam  on  the  tide  of 
popular  memory-,  tossed  hither  and  thither,  and  his  who 
can  make  it  artistically  his  own.  Not  to  go  so  far  back  as 
James  Watson's  Choice  Collection  of  Scott i.^h  Poems,  170G- 
1711,  the  ToiieVs  Miscellany,  as  it  has  been  called,  of 
Scotland,  it  was  this  tradition  that  was  maintained,  for 
example,  by  Allan  Ramsay  and  his  literary  circle,  into 
whose  Tea-Table  Miscellany,  1724,  went  songs  of  the 
Ilamiltons  of  Gilbcrtfiold  and  of  liangour,  of  Crawford 
of  Drumsoy,  Mallet  and  Lady  Grizcl  Baillic,  as  his  earlier 
collection  of  Scots  Songs,  1710,  preserved  with  somewhat 
less  literary  sophistication  earlier  minstrelsy  of  a  similar 
kind.  A  lator  group  of  lyrisfs,  more  noHhorn  and  sfat- 
tered  geographically,  included  George  Ilalkct,  a  Jacobite 


144  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

schoolmaster,  Alexander  Ross,  described  as  "a  stickit 
minister  .  .  .  contented  and  tuneful  on  twenty  pounds 
a  year,"  Alexander  Geddes  of  Morayshire,  a  Roman 
Catholic  priest,  and  John  Skinner,  a  persecuted  Episcopal 
minister  of  Aberdeenshire.  Burns  especially  admired  the 
verve  and  spirit  of  the  songs  of  Skinner  and  owed  much  to 
him  on  his  own  confession.  As  in  the  old  Elizabethan 
time,  this  gift  of  song  was  no  respecter  of  persons,  and  here 
in  Scotland  it  was  shared  by  laird  and  ploughman,  by 
men  and  women  alike.  Jean  Adams,  who  wrote  "There's 
nae  luck  about  the  house,"  ended  an  unhappy  life  in  an 
almshouse;  Isobel  or  Tibbie  Pagan,  author  of  "Ca'  the 
yowes  to  the  knowes,"  was  a  cottager  of  Ayrshire,  de- 
scribed as  deformed,  dissolute,  and  as  formidable  for  her 
tongue  as  attractive  for  her  powers  of  song.  On  the  other 
hand.  Lady  Anne  Lindsay,  daughter  of  the  Earl  of 
Balcarres,  was  reputed  the  author  of  "  Auld  Robin  Gray"; 
and  the  names  of  Harry  Erskine,  later  Earl  of  Rosslyn, 
for  his  patriotic  "The  Garb  of  Old  Gaul,"  and  of  Sir  John 
Clerk,  a  Baron  of  the  Exchequer,  like  those  of  many 
another  laird  and  gentleman,  figure  among  those  who 
contributed  cither  songs  of  their  own  or  old  songs  re- 
fashioned to  the  Scottish  lyrical  stream  of  the  day.  Among 
many  other  names  may  be  mentioned  that  of  Dr.  Austin, 
fashionable  physician  of  Edinburgh,  Alexander  Wilson, 
ornithologist,  the  aeronaut,  "Balloon  Tytler,"  original 
editor  of  the  Encyclopedia  Britannica,  the  schoolmasters, 
Blacklock  and  Hewitt,  Skirving,  a  farmer  of  wealth, 
Lowe,  like  Burns  a  gardener's  son,  IMayne,  a  compositor, 


I 


THE   LYRICAL  DECLINE  145 

and  John  Logan,  the  eloquent  mmister  of  Leith,  It  was 
in  such  a  literature  of  song,  preceding  and  surrounding 
him,  that  Burns  was  reared  and  grew  insensibly  from  a 
partaker  in  its  treasures  into  a  mastery  of  it  as  his  own 
inherited  possession.  Burns,  acting  naturally  and  dar- 
ingly on  the  accepted  processes  of  former  Scottish  poetry, 
took  his  own  wherever  he  found  it  with  a  confidence  and 
a  justification  unparalleled  save  in  the  not  altogether  dis- 
similar case  of  Shakespeare's  own  lyrics.  This  is  particu- 
larly true  of  the  relations  of  Burns  to  Robert  Fergusson, 
the  precocious  and  unhappy  young  Edinburgh  poet  who 
died  in  a  mad-house  in  1774,  when  only  twenty -four  years 
of  age.  Burns  erected  a  monument  to  the  memory  of 
Fergusson,  and  never  ceased  to  admire  him  and  to  ac- 
knowledge his  poetical  indebtedness  to  him.  Burns  thus 
becomes  in  Scotland  the  crown  of  a  long  series  of  influ- 
ences and  the  artistic  form-giver  of  many  an  old  song 
which  his  genius  ia  transformation  has  made  his  own. 
For  this  reason  the  poet  is  constantly  less  successful  when 
literary  influences  rather  than  those  of  tradition  move  him, 
or  tiiose  dependent  on  his  excjuisite  sensibilities  or  his 
own  admirable  powers  of  observation. 

To  return  to  the  life  of  the  poet,  it  has  been  in  fashion 
not  so  long  since  to  expatiate  on  Burns  the  country  roue 
and  ciirousiiig  exciseman;  and  a  feUow  poet,  alas,  lias 
made  it  his  business  to  make  the  most  of  tliese  delin- 
qiicnrics.*  Were  the  (iiscnssion  of  these  matters  needful, 
much  might  be  said  on  the  character  of  the  age  of  Burns 
'  See  Ilcnley,  Burnt,  Life,  Genius,  Achievement,  1808. 


U6  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

somewhat  to  mitigate  the  inevitable  harshness  of  any 
verdict  against  him,  and  more  were  we  willing  to  ply 
our  own  contemporary  vagary  that  seeks  to  justify  the 
destruction  sometimes  wrought  in  the  path  of  genius  by 
the  theory  of  "the  overman."  But  why  should  we  pass 
on  aberrations  of  conduct  which  Burns  shared  with  hun- 
dreds of  his  weak  fellow-mortals  who  were  not  possessed 
of  a  tithe  of  his  genius?  The  experiences  of  Burns  with 
the  lasses  of  Ayrshire  indubitably  heightened  the  glow  of 
passion  in  many  a  fine  lyric;  and  it  was  the  good  cheer 
that  he  loved  that  cost  the  poet  his  life.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  neither  the  conduct  of  Burns  (which  was  often  far 
from  admirable),  nor  his  politics,  nor  his  other  opinions 
need  in  any  serious  wise  concern  us.  It  is  the  poet,  — 
here,  of  the  many  sides  of  that  poet,  his  compelling  power 
over  words  and  phrases,  his  minute  and  vivid  sense  of 
reality  in  detail,  his  mastery  of  the  weapons  of  scorn  and 
indignation,  —  it  is  specifically  the  lyrist  that  interests  us 
and  holds  our  admiring  attention.  And  as  a  lyrist  Burns 
is  supreme.  Poignancy  and  sincerity  of  passion,  music 
swift  and  infinitely  varied,  the  rule  of  a  sure  artistic  taste, 
and  that  unerring  certainty  of  touch  in  which  we  recog- 
nize how  inferior  is  the  thought  of  the  wisest  man,  if  he 
be  not  a  poet,  to  the  instant  flash  of  the  poet's  intuition  — 
all  these  things  in  their  perfection  are  qualities  of  the 
lyrical  poetry  of  Burns.  And  he  was  as  happy  in  the 
possession  of  them  all  as  he  was  fortunate  in  having, 
by  virtue  of  his  birth,  a  medium  for  the  expression  of 
his  poetry,  unhackneyed  by  the  daily  barter  of  literary 


THE  LYRICAL   DECLINE  147 

usage,  and  a  mastery  over  verse  and  stanza  that  con- 
stantly wrought  new  wonders  out  of  material  trite  and 
old.  Burns  reached  a  clarity  and  simplicity  of  diction  in 
the  lyric  unmatched  by  any  one  before  his  time  save 
Shakespeare;  and  he  also  attained  to  that  choicest  gift 
of  the  greatest  poets,  the  power  to  give  to  elemental  and 
universal  ideas  a  form  of  crystalline  and  lasting  beauty. 
From  our  point  of  view  of  the  lyric,  none  of  the  lesser 
poets  of  the  last  of  the  century  need  hold  us,  whatever 
his  individual  claim  on  the  high  seas  of  general  poetry. 
The  inspiration  of  Burns  begot  a  lesser  inspiration  in 
several  lesser  poets:  Joanna  Baillie,  with  her  Fugitive 
Verses,  1790,  more  memorable  for  her  few  songs  than  for 
her  portentous  Plays  of  the  Passions  ;  and  Lady  Nairne, 
although  her  poetry,  with  that  of  Hogg  and  Tannahill, 
comes  rather  later,  with  the  influences  of  the  romantic 
outburst  likewise  upon  them.  Erasmus  Darwin,  with  iiis 
Botanic  Garden,  last  and  most  preposterously  logical  of  the 
followers  of  Pope;  William  Hayley,  puzzled  friend  and 
benefactor  of  Blake,  as  wretched  a  poet  as  he  appears  to 
have  been  an  estimable  man;  Samuel  Rogers,  who  aimed 
in  his  Pleasures  of  Memory,  as  in  his  later  pleasing  versi- 
fied guide  book,  Italy,  no  higher  than  prose  and  reached 
no  higher:  in  none  of  these  is  there  the  slightest  suspi- 
cion of  the  lyric.  And  still  less  could  we  expect  to  find 
song  in  the  Rolliads,  the  Baviads,  and  Mcsviads,  in  which, 
as  in  the  earlier  Diabolinds,  contemporary  small  satirists 
in  forgotten  diatribes  chid  lesser  men  than  themselves. 
Hannah  More,  "the  most  powerful  versificatrix  in  the 


118  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

language"  as  Dr.  Johnson  called  her,  yields  little  that  is 
lyrical;  and  the  verses  of  Mrs.  Mary  Robinson,  the  Prince 
of  Wales's  "Perdita,"  who  styled  herself  "the  English 
Sappho,"  yield,  of  their  kind,  too  much.  Another  poetess, 
x\nna  Laititia  Barbauld,  in  a  long  life  of  literary  diligence, 
reached  deserved  repute  for  a  single  beautiful  poem,  be- 
ginning, "Life!  we've  been  long  together"  ;  though  that, 
too,  came  later.  With  Blake,  Chatterton,  and  Burns  in 
mind,  and  likewise  with  the  respectable  unlyrical  people 
noticed  above,  it  might  almost  be  said  that  the  lyric  by 
1795  had  fallen  into  the  hands  of  women  and  children, 
ploughmen  and  mad  folk.  But  the  day  was  at  hand, 
and  the  lyric  was  shortly  to  come  to  its  own.  In  this  very 
year,  1795,  Walter  Savage  Landor  issued  the  first  of  his 
volumes  of  poetry;  in  the  next,  Coleridge  appeared  for  the 
first  time  as  an  author  in  company  with  Charles  Lamb; 
while  1798  is  the  ever  memorable  year  of  the  publication 
by  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge  of  Lyrical  Ballads.  But 
all  of  this  belongs  to  the  next  chapter. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE   LTHIC   AND   THE   ROMANTIC   REVIVAL 

HERE  are  words  that  are  like  palm-worn 
coins ;  we  believe  them  to  be  precious  metal, 
but  we  know  neither  their  sometime  weight 
nor  to  what  sovereigns  they  once  owed  alle- 
giance: they  have  become  mere  counters.  Such  a  word 
is  "romanticism,"  with  some  half  dozen  like,  —  classical, 
psychological,  renaissance  movement,  —  and  they  de- 
serve no  less  than  banishment  from  our  lips  and  from  our 
books,  could  we  know  how  to  get  on  without  them.  As 
to  romanticism,  which  is  our  concern,  to  attempt  a  new 
definition  here  would  be  mere  pedantry;  to  assume  that 
the  term  is  likely  to  mean  sufficiently  nearly  the  same 
thing  to  any  two  minds  to  make  exact  a  joint  conclusion, 
would  be  an  assumi)tion  hazardous  at  the  least.  And  yet 
obviously  there  is  a  difference  between  the  trim  and  defi- 
nite urban  world  of  Pope,  between  nature  as  excellently 
described  by  Thomson,  or  man  set  nakedly  forth  by 
Crabbe  and  the  transfigured  world  of  Wordsworth,  Cole- 
ridge, Keats,  and  Siielley;  and  somewhere  within  the 
broad  and  undefined  superficies  that  marks  the  difference, 
the  element  in  literature,  as  in  art,  called  romanticism, 
finds  its  place.  A  well-known  critic  has  called  this  change 
*'  the  renai.ssance  of  wonder,"  and  indubitably  wonder  at 


150  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

the  strange,  the  inexplicable,  a  sense  of  the  unattainable 
beyond  our  philosophical,  as  beyond  our  artistic  reach, 
is  a  striking  component  in  the  make-up  of  our  early  nine- 
teenth-century romantic  poetry.^  But  this  is  not  all;  the 
greatest  poets  do  not  leave  us  in  puzzled  and  dissatisfied 
perplexity,  nor  can  the  art  that  aims  at  it  knows  not 
what,  reached  it  knows  not  how,  charm  much  beyond 
the  period  of  its  novelty.  Dubiety,  approximation,  and 
incompleteness  are  no  more  qualities  to  be  sought  in  art 
than  in  science;  the  suggestiveness,  the  sense  of  something 
seen  from  a  new  angle,  the  depth,  beyond,  so  to  speak, 
which  is  of  the  very  essence  of  romantic  art,  may  be  com- 
passed in  many  other  ways  than  by  stirring  the  sense 
of  the  marvellous.  When  all  has  been  said,  perhaps  the 
artists'  word  "atmosphere,"  long  ago  used  by  Coleridge, 
most  nearly  expresses  this  quality  of  depth,  the  real  crite- 
rion of  romantic  art;  certainly  no  poem,  piece  of  fiction, 
or  picture  that  is  without  the  something  that  we  designate 
"  atmosphere,"  can  be  considered  romantic.  And  we  have 
come  to  set  such  store  on  this  matter  of  shadow  and  light 
that  we  are  wont,  some  of  us  hastily,  to  deny  poetry,  art, 
grace,  existence,  to  anything  else. 

The  influences  that  make  for  a  change  in  taste  seldom 
come  singly  or  as  the  result  of  some  one  revolutionary 
figure.   If  the  nineties  of  the  eighteenth  century  marked 

^  Mr.  Theodore  Watts-Dunton  in  the  Encyclopedia  Britannica.  Of 
course,  this  allusion  by  no  means  disposes  of  this  admirable  phrase  or 
calls  into  any  question  the  fine  critical  discernment  discoverable  in  this 
justly  famous  essay. 


THE  ROMANTIC  REVIVAL  151 

the  culmination  of  Pope  in  Erasmus  Darwin,  the  popular- 
ity of  CowTJer  continued  in  Rogers's  pedestrian  Pleas- 
ures of  Memory,  with  the  Sonnets  of  Bowles  "written 
amidst  various  interesting  scenes,  during  a  tour  under 
youthful  dejection,"  as  one  of  their  accepted  novelties. 
They  saw,  too,  not  only  much  of  the  poetry  of  Blake  and 
Burns,  but  three  little  volumes  in  which  Wordsworth  fig- 
ured,— Lyrical  Ballads  among  them,  —  Coleridge's  Poems 
on  Various  Subjects,  and  first  volumes  of  Southey,  Lamb, 
Landor,  and  Ebenezer  Eliot.  In  almost  all  there  is  de- 
parture from  the  things  poetical  that  had  been,  and  much 
of  their  newness  is  of  a  nature  lyrical.  In  that  famous 
walk  of  Coleridge  and  the  Wordsworths  in  the  Quantocks, 
the  summer  of  17'J6,  when  Lyrical  Ballads  was  discussed 
and  with  it  the  principles  of  the  new  poetry,  Coleridge 
reported  his  agreement  with  his  friend  on  "the  two  car- 
dinal points  of  poetry  —  the  power  of  exciting  the  sym- 
pathy of  the  reader  by  a  faithful  adherence  to  the  truth 
of  nature,  and  the  power  of  gaining  the  interest  of  novelty 
by  the  modifying  colors  of  the  imagination."  It  was  these 
two  "powers"  that  the  two  authors  exercised,  each  in  his 
contribution  to  their  joint  early  effort  —  for  to  Lyrical 
Ballads,  "We  are  Seven"  and  "The  Rime  of  the  Ancient 
Mariner"  both  were  contributed.  It  will  be  recalled  by 
all  readers  of  poetry  how  Wordsworth,  after  a  brief  ex- 
perience with  the  world  in  London  and  in  momentary 
touch  with  the  French  Revolution,  retired  to  his  native 
Lake  ('ountry  to  cultivate  |)Octry  with  a  devotion  and  a 
constancy  absolutely  unparalleled;  and  how  in  contrast, 


152  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

Coleridge  tried  preaching,  journalism,  lecturing,  and  Ger- 
man metaphysics  abroad,  only  to  lose  his  exquisite  gift 
of  poetry  in  the  thirsty  sands  of  theological  and  philo- 
sophical speculation,  in  which,  however,  his  intuitive 
grasp  of  truth,  the  weight  of  his  thought  and  its  suggest- 
iveness,  leave  him,  despite  many  projects  deferred  and 
unfinished,  the  master  critic  of  his  time. 

Wordsworth  wrote  poetry  for  more  than  fifty  years; 
yet  almost  all  his  enduring  work  was  comprised  in  the 
decade  that  opened  with  the  publication  of  Lyrical 
Ballads  and  closed  with  Poems  in  Two  Volumes,  1807. 
This  statement  is  particularly  true  of  the  lyrical  poetry 
with  which  we  are  alone  concerned.  For  with  all  his 
description,  narrative,  and  moralizing,  the  new  thing  that 
Wordsworth  brought  to  English  poetry,  the  memorable 
thing,  was  his  power  to  take  emotions,  actually  roused 
and  stimulated  by  simple  scenes  and  incidents,  and,  pass- 
ing them  through  a  calm  and  meditative  artistic  process, 
transmute  them  into  that  higher  and  more  significant 
product  that  we  call  poetry.  This  process  is  par  excellence 
lyrical.  The  lyrical  poetry  of  Wordsworth  is  of  many 
kinds  and  expressed  in  a  variety  of  our  simple  English 
metres,  handled  always  with  masterly  directness  and  self- 
control.  Some  of  it  is  personal  in  the  older  sense  in  which 
the  master  passion  of  love  has  always  been  the  inspiration 
of  the  poet;  far  more  was  suggested  to  him  by  scenes, 
either  within  his  own  experience  among  his  beloved  lakes 
and  hills,  or  by  incidents  of  his  various  tours  abroad  or 
in  the  British  Isles.   Some  of  the  many,  many  sonnets  — 


THE  ROI^LVNTIC  REVIVAL  153 

reduced  by  rigorous  exclusion  by  Matthew  Arnold  to 
sixty  memorable  ones  —  are  historical  or  called  up  by 
contemporary  political  events.  The  best  of  these,  as  per- 
haps of  the  lyrics  in  other  forms,  are  those  that  touch 
nature  in  her  power  to  reach,  through  the  interpretation 
of  poetry,  the  significance  of  minor  and  commonly  uncon- 
sidered things;  and  like  the  rest  of  the  author's  poetry, 
all  have  passed  through  the  medium  of  the  poet's  personal 
experience  and  cogitation.  It  has  been  said  that  Words- 
worth drew  little  from  the  acquisitions  of  other  men;  that 
he  started  life  with  no  such  stock  in  trade  of  generally 
accepted  ideas  as  most  of  us  possess,  for  the  most  part  un- 
conscious that  we  possess  them.  To  such  a  mind  every- 
thing that  it  observes  comes  in  the  light  of  an  actual 
discovery;  hence  the  poet's  descent,  at  times,  into  mere 
trivialities,  —  we  may  believe  that  none  of  them  were  such 
to  him,  —  and  his  strange  inability  to  distinguish  the  ex- 
cellent among  his  own  poems  from  the  moralizing  medi- 
ocrity that  characterizes  so  much  of  the  Wordsworthian 
low  countries. 

The  ruminating  subjectivity  of  Wordsworth  is  by  no 
means  easy  to  understand.  Like  most  men  who  live 
much  to  themselves  and  think  deeply,  Wordsworth  was 
peculiarly  self-centred  and  in  a  certain  sense  narrow. 
But  when  he  sought  exi)rcssion  for  his  personality  in  his 
art,  he  found  it,  not  like  Byron,  in  laying  bare  what  wc 
may  call  the  physical  autobiography  of  his  soul  to  an 
astonished  world,  or  in  a  Kcatsian  absorjjtion  in  the 
worship  of  beauty  as  a  cult,  but  in  the  elcvaliou  of  his  own 


154  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

musings  from  the  plain  of  observation  and  meditation 
to  the  sphere  of  poetry,  in  which  the  thing  once  merely 
personal  to  the  poet  comes  to  have  a  new  and  universal 
significance.  The  Prelude,  which  is  Wordsworth's  spiritual 
autobiography  of  soul,  and  many  of  the  lyrics,  illustrate 
this  quality:  "The  Solitary  Reaper,"  "The  Highland 
Girl,"  even  the  poems  "  to  Lucy."  Take,  for  example,  the 
often  quoted 

I  wandered  lonely  as  a  cloud 

That  floats  on  high  o'er  vales  and  hills. 

When  all  at  once  I  saw  a  crowd, 

A  host,  of  golden  daffodils; 

Beside  the  lake,  beneath  the  trees. 

Fluttering  and  dancing  in  the  breeze. 

The  waves  beside  tliem  danced;  but  they 

Out-did  the  sparkling  waves  in  glee: 

A  poet  could  not  but  be  gay. 

In  such  a  jocund  company: 

I  gazed  —  and  gazed  —  but  little  thought 

What  wealth  the  show  to  me  had  brought: 

For  oft,  when  on  my  couch  I  lie 
In  vacant  or  in  pensive  mood, 
They  flash  upon  that  inward  eye 
Which  is  the  bliss  of  solitude; 
And  then  my  heart  with  pleasure  fills. 
And  dances  with  the  daffodils. 

Here  as  in  so  many  of  his  poems  it  is  not  the  subject,  but 
its  transformation  on  the  anvil  of  poetic  thought  that 
gives  it  its  beauty  and  permanence.  Wordsworth  extended 
the  lyric  to  a  wider  range  of  personal-impersonal  feelings. 


THE  RO^L\NTIC  REVWAL  155 

shall  we  call  them,  than  it  had  known  before,  unfolding 
to  us  the  joy  there  is  in  the  unregarded  things,  when  once 
seen  in  the  "light  that  never  was,  on  sea  or  land."  In- 
deed, to  Wordsworth  poetry  was  not  alone  "the  spon- 
taneous overflow  of  powerful  feeling";  to  the  making  of  it 
went,  likewise,  according  to  his  own  theory,  subsequent 
"recollection  in  tranquillity."  It  may  be  said  that  it  is 
this  leisurely  pondering  and  shaping  of  poetic  material 
in  a  mind  never  hurried,  never  perturbed,  never  weary 
with  its  own  processes,  if  not  always  uniformly  successful 
in  the  result,  that  distinguishes  Wordsworth  among  Eng- 
lish poets.  It  is  in  poems  such  as  the  sonnet  "On  West- 
minster Bridge,"  and  the  scarcely  less  beautiful  "Evening 
on  Calais  Beach,"  in  "The  world  is  too  much  with  us," 
the  immortal  "Ode  on  Intimations  of  Immortality," 
the  "Ode  to  Duty,"  and  a  score  of  lovely  lyrics,  "The 
Green  Linnet,"  "To  a  Cuckoo,"  and  some  more,  that 
Wordsworth  is  at  his  best.  In  the  rare  union  that  he 
reached  in  such  poems  of  "deep  feeling  with  profound 
thought,"  and  with  a  style,  at  its  best,  restrained  almost 
to  a  Greek  purity,  this  greatest  of  the  romantic  poets 
attained  to  heights  beyond  which,  with  all  the  imitation 
that  he  inspired,  our  English  lyrical  poetry  has  not  yet 
soared. 

If  Wordsworth  moves  us  poetically  with  "thoughts 
too  deep  for  tears,"  the  contrasted  ai)i)eai  of  Coleridge  is 
arldrossed  more  directly  to  the  senses;  and  his  is  that  inex- 
|)li(;il)Ic  cliurin  lliiil  comes  with  llic  power  of  magic.  It 
has  l)een  said  lliul  "  Kiibla  Ivlian"  is  iiii  iiifalliblc  touch- 


156  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

stone  of  lyrical  appreciation  as  it  is  likewise  of  lyrica} 
quality,  by  comparison,  in  other  poems.  Indubitably  the 
lyrical  taste  of  him  who  can  not  recognize  the  warmth  of 
color,  the  pomp  and  music  of  sound,  the  weird  intensity 
of  feeling,  involved  in  this  remarkable  fragment  of  a  fan- 
tastic dream  poetized,  may  well  be  deaf  to  lyrical  quality 
in  other  modes;  but  to  dignify  "Kubla  Khan"  to  any 
such  position  would  be  much  the  same  as  to  make  some 
one  of  the  exquisite,  cobweb  incoherences  of  Debussy 
musically  the  touchstone  of  lyrical  spirit  in  Beethoven, 
Chopin,  or  Schumann.  The  touch  of  magic  which  is 
Coleridge's,  notably  of  course  in  "Christabel,"  is  assur- 
edly an  exquisite  gift  and  the  beginning  of  a  new  note 
which  deeply  affected  the  poetry  of  the  century.  Seldom 
has  a  poet  so  successfully  essayed  new  melodies  by  re- 
aflSrming,  however  unconsciously  (as  Coleridge  did  in 
"Christabel"),  the  metrical  freedom  which  has  ever  been 
the  birthright  of  English  verse.  Quite  as  rarely,  too,  has 
incompleteness  lent  a  charm,  unequalled  even  by  the  sus- 
tained artistic  logic  by  means  of  which  Coleridge's  other 
masterpiece  in  the  supernatural,  "  The  Rime  of  the  An- 
cient Mariner,"  reaches  its  unqualified  success.  But  magic 
in  Coleridge  is  not  merely  dependent  on  the  supernatural. 
Take  these  exquisite  lines  from  "Youth  and  Age": 

0  Youth !  for  years  so  many  and  sweet, 
'T  is  known  that  thou  and  I  were  one; 

1  'U  think  it  but  a  fond  conceit  — 
It  cannot  be  that  thou  art  gone! 
Thy  vesper-bell  hath  not  yet  toll'd  — 
And  thou  wert  aye  a  masker  bold ! 


THE  ROMANTIC  RE\T^^AL  157 

What  strange  disguise  hast  now  put  on. 
To  make  believe  that  thou  art  gone  ? 
I  see  these  locks  in  silvery  slips, 
This  drooping  gait,  this  alter'd  size: 
But  springtide  blossoms  on  thy  lips. 
And  tears  take  sunshine  from  thine  eyes! 
Life  is  but  thought:  so  think  I  will 
That  Youth  and  I  are  housemates  still. 

What  other  English  poet  employs  such  witchery  of  phrase 
on  so  every-day,  so  universal  a  topic?  And  yet  very  little 
of  Coleridge's  poetry  is  really  personal;  everywhere  we 
find  him  exercising  the  function  of  the  philosopher  in 
generalizing  emotion  until  it  becomes  typical  and  there- 
fore artistic.  In  one  of  the  profound  pieces  of  critical  in- 
sight which  characterize  that  fascinating  autobiography, 
the  Biographia  Literaria,  Coleridge  declares  that  one  of 
the  first  criteria  of  genius  is  the  power  to  exercise  the 
poetic  art  on  subject-matter  remote  from  the  personal 
experiences  of  the  poet;  for  only  thus  can  the  passion  de- 
lineated be  truly  disinterested  and  so  reach  the  typical.' 
This  Coleridge  again  and  again  succeeds  in  doing,  creat- 
ing for  us  as  a  result  a  veritable  atmosphere  of  light  and 
color  in  the  medium  of  which  his  ideas  became  in  the 
highest  sense  of  the  word  romantic. 

From  these  heights  of  the  romanticism  of  the  spirit 
and  from  Wordsworthian  revelation  we  must  now  de- 
scend to  the  picturesrjuencss  and  admirable  selectiveness 
that  mark  the  poetical  narratives  of  Sir  Walter  Scott;  and 
possibly  the  best  way  to  make  this  descent  is  by  way  of 
'  C^IinptfT  XV,  Workx  of  Coleridge,  American  cd.  1884,  in,  370. 


158  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

James  Hogg,  Scott's  fellow-countryman,  the  "Ettrick 
Shepherd."  Hogg  was  born  in  1770,  the  same  year  with 
Wordsworth;  though  Wordsworth  survived  Hogg,  who 
died  in  1835,  no  less  than  fifteen  years.  Hogg  was  no  more 
than  a  herd-boy,  but  he  acquired  at  his  mother's  knee 
much  of  that  rich  folk-lore  of  the  Scottish  peasantry  which 
we  have  already  found  at  once  the  inspiration  and  the 
quarry  of  Burns.  Hogg  was  twenty  years  old  before  he 
had  mastered  what  Carlyle  calls  "the  mystery  of  alpha- 
betic letters";  but  at  twenty-six  he  had  begun  to  write 
verses,  and  his  earliest  songs  were  printed  in  1800.  Hogg 
has  been  described  as  a  poet,  "wholly  destitute  of  pas- 
sion," but  he  could  write  a  stirring  battle  song  such  as 
"Lock  the  door,  Lariston,"  and  there  is  lilt  and  music  in 
some  of  his  songs  ("When  the  kye  comes  hame"  or  "My 
love  is  but  a  lassie  yet")  that  would  not  discredit  Burns 
himself.  In  "Kilmeny,"  the  quality  of  which  is  lyric 
despite  its  narrative  form,  Hogg  attained,  unmistakably 
for  once,  romantic  magic.  There  is  an  unearthly  glamour 
about  the  stolen  maiden,  allowed  to  revisit  her  earthly 
home  by  her  captors  in  the  land  of  faery,  that  thrills  almost 
as  Coleridge  can  thrill  us.  And  among  the  innumerable 
lyrics  that  the  skylark  has  inspired  in  English  poets,  few 
are  so  charming  as  Hogg's,  beginning : 

Bird  of  the  wilderness, 

BIythesome  and  cumberless, 
Sweet  be  thy  matin  o'er  moorland  and  lea! 

Emblem  of  happiness, 

Blest  is  thy  dwelling-place  — 
0  to  abide  in  the  desert  with  thee! 


THE  RO^L\NTIC  REVIVAL  159 

It  used  to  be  the  fashion  to  praise  Sir  Walter  Scott  for 
the  versatility  with  which  he  turned  from  success  in 
poetry  to  success  in  prose,  from  the  writing  of  romantic 
narrative  in  verse  to  the  writing  of  romantic  narrative  in 
prose.  There  was  obviously  no  versatility  here;  for,  de- 
spite all  the  charm  and  motion  of  the  longer  poems  of 
Scott,  they  remain  largely  pure  narrative  and  lift  more 
rarely  into  the  higher  regions  of  poetry  than  any  verse 
of  their  merit  in  the  language.  From  the  possession  in 
it  almost  alone  among  the  songs  of  Scott  of  the  much 
vaunted  touch  of  magic  by  which  the  romanticists  set 
such  store,  the  song  from  The  Heart  of  Midlothian  begin- 
ning" Proud  Maisie  Is  in  the  wood"  has  been  called  Scott's 
only  lyric.  But  there  are  other  poems  that  deserve  the 
title:  the  pretty  lullaby  "Now,  bless  thee,  my  baby," 
patriotic  lyrics  such  as  "King  Charles"  and  "Bonnie 
Dundee,"  and  the  lively  hunting  song  with  its  charming 
refrain,  "Waken,  lords  and  ladies  gay,"  assuredly  among 
them.  Scott  was  so  splendid  a  piece  of  manhood,  with 
honesty,  courtesy,  and  chivalry  so  written  in  large  upon 
his  life,  that  it  irks  one  to  find  anything  wanting  in  his 
ample  nature.  Yet  he  was  possessed  precisely  of  those 
qualities  that  are  most  frequently  mistaken  in  their  glitter, 
facility,  and  success  for  i)oetry.  Scott  has  hardly  any  in- 
sight irilo  niiture  beyond  those  features  and  situations 
that  jirc  ol)viously  picturesque,  and  no  storms  of  i)assion 
or  depths  of  inward  pondering  exi)ress  themselves  lyric- 
ally in  all  ills  voluinirujus  writings.  It  would  be  a  mistake 
to  attribute  this,  however,  to  insensibility  or  to  the  lack 


160  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

of  a  strong  and  finely  tempered  personality.  Great  lit- 
erary man  that  he  was,  Scott  was  simply  not  lyrically 
vocal;  and  we  feel,  as  we  read  his  occasional  lyrical  suc- 
cesses, that  they  are  after  all  exceptional. 

Scott  touched  life  at  first  hand,  even  if  tradition,  the 
archaeologist  and  the  collector  of  curios  in  him,  did  inter- 
fere at  times  to  destroy  the  contact.  Robert  Southey, 
who  was  surer  in  his  own  heart,  with  his  Thalahas  and  his 
Kehamas,  of  poetical  immortality  than  possibly  any  other 
English  poet  laureate,  seems  to  have  reached  mankind 
and  the  world  only  through  the  intervention  of  books; 
and  accordingly  he  has  left  just  one  poem  quotable  even 
approximately  as  a  lyric,  the  "Stanzas  written  in  his 
Library."  The  estimable  virtues  of  Southey,  of  which  his 
friends  and  the  critics  have  made  so  much,  no  more  con- 
cern us  than  his  unreadable  epics.  Precisely  the  contrary 
is  true  of  Charles  Lamb;  for  Lamb  in  his  habitual  expres- 
sion of  self,  so  natural  and  so  charming,  is  always  more 
than  half  a  lyrist,  although  he  has  left  in  bulk  little  that 
is  clothed  in  the  customary  raiment  of  poetry.  Lamb's 
earliest  poetry,  entitled  Blank  Verse  and  written  with 
Charles  Lloyd,  belongs  in  publication  to  the  year  1798. 
Proportionate  to  its  amount,  the  poetry  of  Lamb  furnishes 
much  to  the  anthologies,  all  of  it  original  and  of  worth. 
Like  Southey,  Lamb,  too,  lived  in  books,  but  with  how 
different  a  result.  Lamb's  contribution  to  the  romanti- 
cism of  his  time  was  his  discovery  of  the  Elizabethans  and 
the  joyous  and  discerning  acclamation  that  he  gave  them. 
He  is  more  than  half  a  poet  of  an  elder  age  himself.   A 


THE  ROMANTIC  REVIVAL  161 

favorite  lyrical  metre  of  Lamb's,  for  example,  is  the  octo- 
syllabic, managed  much  after  the  manner  of  Wither.  Lamb 
employs  it  in  his  exquisite  "metaphysical"  bit  of  moral- 
izing "On  an  infant  dying  as  soon  as  born,"  and  again, 
linked  in  threes,  as  Carew  was  wont  to  use  it,  in  the  beau- 
tiful lines  "In  my  own  Album."  Lamb,  too,  could  raise 
personal  emotion  to  the  height  of  lyrical  impersonality, 
and  we  know  not  whether  "  When  Maidens  such  as  Hester 
die,"  written  of  one  to  whom  the  poet  had  never  even 
spoken,  reminds  us  more,  in  its  circumstances,  of  Donne 
and  his  unseen,  unknown  Mistress  Drury,  or  of  Words- 
worth and  his  "Highland  Girl."  There  is  a  choiceness  of 
flavor  in  a  love  poem  such  as  this,  rarefied  like  the  ether 
above  the  heats  and  clouds  of  earthly  passion,  and  as  per- 
fect in  expression,  too,  as  in  mood.  Only  once  has  Lamb 
surpassed  this  lyric,  and  that  is  in  "The  Old  Familiar 
Faces,"  daring  metrical  experiment  though  it  is,  and  one 
that  the  poet  did  not  repeat.  If  a  poem  is  to  be  judged  by 
its  success  and  not  by  preconceptions,  "The  Old  Familiar 
Faces"  must  be  accepted  without  extenuation  or  excuse. 
No  flow  of  orthodoxly  regulated  syllables  could  produce 
the  complete  efTcct  of  these  broken  words,  ordered  in  the 
slow  movement  of  desi)uiring  revery. 

I  have  had  j)Iayraate.s,  I  have  had  companions. 

In  my  days  of  childhood,  in  my  joyful  school-days  — 

All,  all  arc  jjonc,  the  old  familiar  faces. 

I  have  been  laugliin^^,  I  have  been  caroiisinff, 
I)rinkin>{  late,  sitting  lafc,  with  iny  bosom  cronies —    ■ 
All,  all  are  gone,  tlic  old  familiar  faces. 


162  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

How  some  they  have  died,  and  some  they  have  left  me. 
And  some  are  taken  from  me;  all  are  departed  — 
All,  all  are  gone,  the  old  familiar  faces. 

Such  a  tour  de  force  is  never  to  be  classed  with  the  met- 
rical nihilism  of  a  Whitman ;  but  as  a  daring  Turneresque 
triumph  by  means  of  the  employment  of  an  untried  med- 
ium in  a  case  not  to  be  won  by  the  assent  of  orthodoxy. 

Walter  Savage  Landor,  though  five  years  the  junior  of 
Wordsworth,  published  poetry  almost  as  early  and  formed 
for  himself  ideals  in  literature  as  independent.  Moreover 
Landor's  was  a  style  more  purely  his  own  than  that  of 
any  poet  of  his  time.  His  achievements  in  letters  were 
manifold:  prose, drama,  the  epic,  the  lyric,  and,  above  all, 
the  epigram.  In  all,  too,  he  attained  excellence,  though 
popularity  has  never  waited  on  him.  Landor's  literary 
pose  throughout  his  long  life  was  that  of  aloofness,  he 
literally  "strove  with  none,"  and  he  succeeded  in  keeping 
himself  singularly  free  from  the  Gothic  romanticism  that 
permeated  Scott  and  the  rest  of  the  narrative  poets  and 
from  the  naturalism  of  the  Wordsworthians  as  well.  The 
classical  training  of  Landor  was  extraordinary  and  his 
facility  in  Latin  verse  such  that  he  frequently  wrote  his 
poems  in  both  languages,  preferably  translating  into  Eng- 
lish from  the  Latin  in  which  he  had  first  clothed  his 
thoughts.  Indeed,  in  his  restrained  and  studied  beauty  of 
thought,  Landor  was  more  artistically  conscious,  whether 
in  verse  or  in  prose,  than  any  other  English  author  of 
rank  easily  to  be  named;  and  in  consequence  there  is 


THE  ROMANTIC  REVIVAL  163 

an  epigrammatic  flavor  rather  than  a  lyrical  about  the 
greater  number  of  his  shorter  poems.  Even  his  deservedly 
most  popular  lyric,  "Rose  Aylmer,"  possesses  this  char- 
acteristic. In  a  word,  Landor  is  less  completely  a  lyrist 
than  one  of  the  most  consummate  writers  of  vers  de  societe 
in  the  language.  ]Many  of  his  poems  in  this  kind  are  of 
extreme  brevity,  four  lines,  at  most  eight  or  ten,  but 
finished  to  the  last  syllable.  Such  is  the  famous  epitaph, 
"I  strove  with  none  for  none  was  worth  my  strife,"  the 
hardly  less  perfect,  "Ah!  do  not  drive  oft"  grief,"  or  this: 

How  many  voices  gaily  sing, 
"O  happy  morn,  O  happy  spring 
Of  life!"  Meanwhile  there  comes  o'er  me 
A  softer  voice  from  memory. 
And  says,  "  If  loves  and  hopes  have  flown 
With  years,  think  too  what  griefs  are  gone!  " 

Surely  none  will  deny  that  such  poetry  has  in  it  more  than 
the  quality  of  mere  epigram;  the  unity,  the  single  tone, 
the  grace  of  i)erfect  execution,  the  deeper  feeling  be- 
neath —  all  these  are  qualities  of  the  lyric.  A  longer 
specimen  of  this  union  of  lyrical  and  epigrammatic  art  is 
the  following: 

In  (.'iemciilina's  artless  mien 
Liicilla  H.sks  me  what  I  see. 
And  are  the  roses  of  sixteen 
Enough  for  me  ? 

Lucilla  asks  if  that  be  ail. 

Have  I  not  ciiU'd  as  swe<'t  before: 
Ah  yes,  LncjlJa!  and  their  fall 
I  still  d('i)lore. 


164  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

I  now  behold  another  scene. 

Where  pleasure  beams  with  Heaven's  own  light. 
More  pure,  more  constant,  more  serene. 
And  not  less  bright. 

Faith,  on  whose  breast  the  Loves  repose. 

Whose  chain  of  flowers  no  force  can  sever. 
And  Modesty  who,  when  she  goes. 
Is  gone  forever. 

Is  it  over-subtle  to  observe  that  the  last  stanza  performs 
the  double  function  of  completing  the  description  of  the 
maiden  and  informing  the  poet's  enquirer  why  such  as 
she  are  not  preferred  to  "the  roses  of  sixteen"?  Landor 
wrote  greater  things  than  his  lyrics;  but  some  of  us  gladly 
recur  to  them  for  their  finish,  their  taste  and  reserve,  and 
for  that  fine  salt  of  wit  that  may  yet  preserve  them  beyond 
the  term  of  our  contemporary  predilection  for  "nature," 
"atmosphere,"  and  the  other  indefinable  things  that  we 
spend  so  much  of  our  critical  time  in  defining. 

Almost  within  the  decade  in  which  the  copyright  of 
Lyrical  Ballads  was  appraised,  on  the  settlement  of  the 
publisher's  business,  as  of  no  assignable  value,  and  not 
long  before  De  Quincey  could  boast,  with  an  approxima- 
tion to  the  truth,  that  he  was  the  only  reader  of  Landor 's 
Gebir,  Thomas  Campbell  reached  popularity  at  twenty- 
one  with  his  Pleasures  of  Hope,  1799,  which  has  been 
happily  described  as  the  last  gasp  of  the  poetry  of  the 
eighteenth  century.  By  1809,  when  his  Gertrude  of 
Wyoming  was  published  with  equal  success,  he  had  con- 
formed his  style  to  the  romantic  narrative  that  Scott  had 


THE  ROMANTIC  REVIVAL  165 

brought  into  vogue.  Campbell  was  a  versatile  man,  pos- 
sessed of  little  originality,  but  clever  in  seizing  upon  pic- 
turesque and  pleasing  commonplaces  and  treating  them 
with  a  certain  readiness  and  with  a  sentiment  not  ungrace- 
ful. As  to  his  lyrics,  several  of  them  —  "Ye  Mariners  of 
England,"  "The  Battle  of  the  Baltic,"  above  all,  "Hohen- 
linden"  —  caught  and  retained  the  popular  ear;  and  the 
last,  for  its  genuine  fire  and  spirit,  deserves  its  reputation. 
The  sentimentality  of  Campbell  is  more  difficult  for  us  to 
accept  than  his  somewhat  cheap,  if  eloquent,  patriotism; 
the  former  was  more  acceptable  to  the  age  that  wept  over 
Mrs.  Radcliffe's  novels  and  required  the  satire  of  Gifford  to 
recover  it  from  the  inanities  of  Delia  Crusca.  Below  the 
level  of  memorable  poetry  the  age  abounded  in  tuneful 
song,  that  caught  the  taste  of  the  moment  and  appeared  in 
song-book  and  album.  Charles Dibdin,  who  died  at  almost 
seventy  in  1814,  left  behind  him  six  hundred  songs  of  the 
sea  and  on  other  subjects,  all  of  them  easy,  singable, 
most  of  them  robust,  many  of  them  vulgar.  There  is,  too, 
a  certain  "go"  in  the  now  forgotten  lyrics  of  Thomas 
Dermody,  sonic  of  them  written  as  far  back  at  least  as 
1790,  and  the  later  ones  collected  posthumously  into  the 
Harv  of  Erin,  1807. 

In  the  lyrifs  of  Thomas  Moore,  so  famous  in  his  day, 
we  meet  with  llie  very  beau  ideal  of  immediate  and 
happy  contemporary  success.  Moore  gained  his  repu- 
tation with  Odes  Jrom  Anacreon,  1800,  wliirli  is  both 
less  and  more  than  a  translation,  and  in  his  revival, 
at    least   in    respectable   form,  of   the   old    song-books, 


166  THE  ENGLISH  LYKIC 

Irish  Melodies  with  Music,  1807,  and  nine  other  edi- 
tions up  to  1834.  Moore  has  been  perfectly  described  by 
Mr.  Symons  as  "the  Irishman  as  the  Englishman  imag- 
ines him  to  be,"  "he  represents  a  part  of  the  Irish  tem- 
perament; but  not  the  part  which  makes  for  poetry."  ^ 
Indeed,  no  two  things  could  be  wider  at  variance  than  a 
genuine  lyrical  inspiration,  such,  for  example,  as  that  of 
Burns,  with  the  traditions  of  three  centuries  of  national 
song  behind  him,  and  the  drawing-room  prettiness  and 
sentimentality  of  the  words  that  Moore  —  polite,  viva- 
cious gentleman  of  the  tinsel  society  of  the  regency  — 
devised  to  fit  his  Irish  Melodies.  Moore  wrote  wholly  to 
please,  and  some  of  his  "melodies"  are  pleasing,  their 
phrases  gracefully  and  prettily  turned,  their  sentiments 
such  as  all  give  assent  to,  and  creditable  to  their  author. 
It  was  cruel  of  Mr.  Symons  to  submit  Moore  to  a  contrast 
with  his  fellow-countryman, Mr.  Yeats;  no  paper  blossom, 
though  bright  as  cochineal  or  aniline  dye  can  make  it,  can 
stand  comparison  with  nature.  Although  his  work  came 
somewhat  later  with  English  Songs,  collected  in  1832, 
Barry  Cornwall,  as  Bryan  Waller  Procter  was  poetically 
known  to  his  age,  belongs  here,  not  too  far  removed  from 
Moore  and  Dibdin.  Procter  seems  to  have  been  one  of 
the  most  lovable  of  men;  from  Lamb  and  Landor  to  Swin- 
burne (for  Procter  ended  a  long  life  in  1872),  men  united 
to  praise  him.  He  appears  to  have  united  two  character- 
istics not  usually  found  in  the  same  author,  —  a  tendency 
to  take  the  color  of  his  own  work  from  the  models  about 
•  Romantic  Movement,  p.  200. 


THE  ROMANTIC  RE\T\^AL  167 

him  and  an  ability,  notwithstanding,  to  suggest  to  others 
what  he  was  unable  to  accomplish  himself.  As  to  the 
lyrics  of  Procter,  they  deal  with  the  obvious  obviously 
and,  possessed  of  a  certain  singing  quality,  carry  their 
light  burden  agreeably,  alike  to  the  ear  and  to  the  under- 
standing. Less  important  are  the  verses  for  music  of 
Thomas  Haynes  Bayley  and  the  imitative  lyrics  of  Allan 
Cunningham,  now  echoing  Burns,  now  Dibdin,  and  reach- 
ing very  little  in  very  much  matter.  With  the  nonsense  in 
song  of  Coleman,  O'Keefe,  and  Theodore  Hook  we  sink 
below  the  lyric,  as  in  the  delicious  humor  of  John  Hook- 
ham  Frere,  the  delightful  parodies  of  James  and  Horace 
Smith,  and  the  biting  wit  of  George  Canning  we  go  over  to 
the  alien  domain  of  satire. 

It  is  astonishing  how  slight  was  the  influence  of  Words- 
worth on  the  poets  of  his  own  generation.  We  might 
mention  Ebenczcr  Elliott's  early  nature  poetry  in  this 
connection,  did  not  the  date  of  The  Vernal  Walk,  1798, 
withstand  us.  Elliott  was  to  find  his  niche  with  his  Corn- 
Law  Rhymes  much  later,  and  after  all  there  is  always  in 
him  more  of  Crabi)o,  invigorated  with  indignation  and 
vociferous  eloquence,  than  of  Wordsworth.  The  poetry  of 
Caroline  Bowles  Southey  disclo.ses  the  tender  sympathy 
with  man  and  nature  that  distinguishes  Wordsworth  and 
reaches  excellence  at  times.  The  sentimentality  that 
Mrs.  Southey  escaped,  however,  beset  most  of  the  other 
women  of  her  age  who  wrote  poetry:  Felicia  Dorothea 
Ilomans,  melodious  and  sincere;  Marv  Ilowitt,  who  at- 
tempted the  weird  and  fanciful,  .sometimes  nearly  attain- 


168  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

ing  success;  diffuse  and  voluble  Letitia  Elizabeth  (Landon) 
Maclean,  known  and  beloved  by  the  album  readers  of 
her  age  as  "L.  E.  L.";  Sara  Coleridge,  who  so  filially  per- 
formed the  duties  that  devolved  upon  her  as  her  father's 
literary  executor,  and  inherited  much  of  his  power  of  mind. 
Her  Phantasmion,  1837,  is  full  of  lyrics  of  considerable 
originality  and  merit.  With  Sir  Aubrey  de  Vere,  who  died 
before  his  master,  we  have  a  certain  disciple  of  Words- 
worth and  imitator  of  him,  especially  in  the  sonnet  relig- 
ious in  tone.  Other  sonneteers  contemporary  were  Ber- 
nard Barton,  the  Quaker  friend  of  Lamb  and  FitzGerald, 
Charles  Strong,  inspired  by  the  glories  of  ancient  Rome, 
and  Thomas  Doubleday,  whose  work  in  this  kind  begins 
as  early  as  1818.  Passing  among  other  minor  poets,  the 
lyrics,  fierce  and  oriental,  of  Dr.  John  Leyden,  linguist 
and  indefatigable  traveller;  the  poems  for  childhood  of 
Ann  and  Jane  Taylor,  who  are  responsible,  for  example, 
for  "Twinkle,  twinkle,  Httle  star";  and  the  over-praised 
mediocrity  of  such  names  as  that  of  Henry  Kirke  White,  we 
note  the  poets  of  one  poem,  —  among  many,  South  Afri- 
can Thomas  Pringle,  praised  by  Coleridge  for  his  "Afar 
in  the  desert,"  still  popular  in  anthologies;  Blanco  White, 
author  of  at  least  one  fine  sonnet;  and  Charles  Wolfe,  who 
outdid  Campbell  in  his  "Hohenlinden"  in  the  famous 
"Burial  of  Sir  John  Moore,"  a  genuine  lyrical  success  in 
its  kind.  Leigh  Hunt,  happy,  impecunious,  lovable  Leigh 
Hunt,  is  possil)ly  better  remembered  for  his  easy  prose, 
his  excellent  translations,  and  his  fascinating  Autobio- 
graphy, in  which  we  get  so  just  and  admirable  a  picture  of 


THE  ROMANTIC  REVI\^AL  169 

the  daily  life  and  associations  of  the  men  who  were  mak- 
ing literature  during  the  earlier  half  of  the  century.  Hunt 
was  a  sympathetic  friend  and  critic,  believing  in  Words- 
worth and  championing  his  poetry  and  his  theories  from 
the  first.  To  his  sympathy  and  encouragement,  likewise, 
both  Keats  and  Shelley  owed  much,  and  his  generous  spirit 
and  discerning  taste  were  always  on  the  outlook  for  pro- 
mise. The  poetry  of  Hunt  is  more  important  historically 
than  intrinsically.  His  work  is  unequal,  at  times  descend- 
ing to  flippancy  and  vulgarity,  the  worse  that  both  appear 
to  have  been  unconscious.  But  Hunt  was  no  mere  trifler, 
and  in  the  anecdote,  "  Abou  Ben  Adhem,"  and  the  strange 
dialogue,  "The  Fish,  the  Man,  and  the  Spirit,"  though 
neither  is  lyrical,  has  done  two  serious  and  original  things 
exceedingly  well.  Hunt's  contributions  of  any  perman- 
ence to  the  lyric  comprise  two  or  three  sonnets,  —  "The 
Grasshopper  and  the  Cricket,"  "The  Nile,"  "On  a  Lock 
of  Milton's  Hair,"  and  little  more. 

In  Byron  England  furnished  a  poet  to  international 
literature  for  the  first  time;  for  Byron  combined,  as  no 
poet  before  him,  a  transcendent  personality  with  a  power 
to  represent  certain  immediate  and  universally  interesting 
characteristics  of  the  s[)iritof  his  age  in  memorable  poetry. 
Byron  addressed  himself  to  the  world,  the  response  was 
immediate;  and  never  was  a  reputation  made  so  easily, 
maintained  so  consciously  and  defiantly,  and,  take  it  all 
in  all,  so  juslifird  in  the  event.  Everything  ubonl  Byron  is 
contradictory.  He  came  to  his  title  when  a  child;  but  had 
been  ill  bred  for  his  station.   Handsome,  gifted,  and  of  a 


170  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

fascinating  personality;  he  was  reputed  deformed.  De- 
voted and  magnanimous  in  friendship,  he  was  as  danger- 
ous as  he  was  faithless  in  love.  A  fashionable  man  of  the 
world  and  a  poseur  before  it,  his  love  of  liberty  was  so  dis- 
interested that  he  died  for  it.  Byron  acquiesced  in  things 
as  they  are,  neither  in  society  nor  in  literature.  In  religion 
he  was  sceptical  without  ceasing  to  believe;  in  poetry  a 
fervent  admirer  of  Pope,  yet  one  of  the  leaders  of  the 
school  of  romantic  revolt;  in  politics,  a  Tory  nobleman 
who  for  a  time  praised  and  justified  Napoleon.  Byron's 
poetry,  too,  is  contradictory,  and  upsetting  to  theorists. 
One  tells  us  that  eloquence  is  heard,  poetry  only  over- 
heard; but  here  is  authentic  poetry  a  condition  of  which  is 
an  audience.  It  was  a  need  of  the  artistic  nature  of  Byron 
that  his  poetry  attract  attention  and  comment,  whether 
appreciative  or  adverse.  Even  his  most  despairing  lyrical 
cry  would  hardly  have  been  uttered  in  the  deeps  and  soli- 
tudes that  long  retained  the  first  reverberations  of  the 
poetry  of  Wordsworth.  Praise  soothed  Byron  while  it 
dissatisfied  him,  criticism  goaded  him  to  new  effort;  hence 
the  immediate  effect  of  Brougham's  very  just  and  cruel 
review  of  Hours  of  Idleness  in  awakening  the  power  and 
sincerity  that  slumbered  under  the  pose  of  the  young  dil- 
ettante in  poetry.  Still  we  can  never  feel  quite  sure  that 
Byron  is  sincere,  however  he  scorns  hypocrisy  and  the 
petty  tricks  of  lesser  egoists.  Indubitably  Byron  de- 
ceived himself  as  he  has  deceived  his  readers.  One  won- 
ders if  he  really  was  as  wicked,  as  world-weary,  as  despair- 
ing of  God  and  man  as  he  believed  himself  to  be  at  this. 


THE  ROMANTIC  REVR^AL  171 

that,  or  the  other  interesting  moment  of  bis  romantic 
career.  To  Byron,  the  adventure  of  sentiment  was  a  ne- 
cessity, and  it  was  more  to  him  in  memory  tinged  with 
remorse,  we  may  well  believe,  than  in  present  enjoyment; 
for  Byron,  like  every  true  hedonist,  was  an  idealist;  and, 
like  every  true  idealist,  he  recognized  with  exquisite  pain 
every  departure  from  accepted  standards,  whether  of  the 
world's  or  of  his  own  making,  and  measured  them  by  their 
deviations. 

Byron  was  possessed  to  the  full  of  the  temperament 
that  makes  for  poetical  expression,  though  not  necessarily 
in  song.  His  personality  was  too  concrete,  too  dramatic, 
too  self-centred  for  that.  And  while  directness,  elo- 
quence, and  a  fine  impetuosity,  at  times,  are  his,  he  has 
little  of  the  subtler  lyrical  music,  as  indeed  he  knew  little 
of  that  delicate  fitting  of  word  to  thought  by  which  poem, 
stanza,  or  line  of  perfect  craftsmanship  comes  to  be  in- 
evitably what  it  is.  It  is  the  large  bold  stroke  that  is 
Byron's,  the  meaning  unmistakable  and  unfraught  with 
refinements,  with  s[)iritual  or  hidden  graces.  And  this  it 
is  that  gives  to  Byron  so  wide  a  currency  in  foreign  trans- 
lation. His  poetry  suffers  less,  done  into  otiier  tongues, 
than  that  of  almost  any  other  English  poet:  his  thoughts 
are  never  insular.  This  is  perhaps  one  of  the  reasons  why 
Goethe  said,  in  memoral)le  words,  tliat  Byron  was  "dif- 
ferent from  all  the  rest  [i.r.,  the  other  English  poets]  and 
in  tlic  main  greater."^   To  return  to  the  lyrics  of  Byron, 

'  S<-«'  Mnlttifw  Arnold's  comments  on  (Jocllic's  estimnte  of  Byron,  in 
Etiays  in  Criticism,  Second  Series,  ed.  1900,  i)p.  ITD-lbO. 


172  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

there  are  certain  personal  ones  that  have  a  poignancy 
and  fervor  from  their  autobiographical  relations:  "When 
we  two  parted,"  "Farewell,  and  if  forever,"  and  the 
"Stanzas  to  Augusta,"  for  example.  Others,  especially  in 
Hebrew  Melodies,  if  less  personal,  are  —  that  is,  the  best 
of  them  —  of  equal  beauty  lyrically :  first  among  them 
"There  be  none  of  Beauty's  daughters,"  "She  walks  in 
beauty  like  the  night,"  and  the  lovely  dirge,  "O!  snatched 
away  in  beauty's  bloom."  There  is  amazing  vigor,  too,  if 
the  fibre  is  somewhat  coarse,  in  several  poems  such  as 
"The  Destruction  of  Sennacherib,"  although  they  tres- 
pass on  narrative.  In  the  fine  ode,  "The  Isles  of  Greece," 
in  Don  Juan,  we  have  the  characteristic  Byronic  attitude 
of  a  train  of  revery,  vividly  realized,  over  scenes  that  call 
up  the  historic  past  and  the  present,  so  incongruous  to 
these  departed  glories.  Yet  with  these  and  many  other 
successes,  Byron  as  a  lyrist  is,  for  all  his  greatness,  some- 
what disappointing.  Notwithstanding  his  eloquence  and 
stormy  passion,  there  is  a  sameness  about  this  handsome, 
interesting,  despairing  lover,  who  tells  his  sorrows  so  volu- 
bly and  with  an  abandon  so  studied  for  effect.  Moreover 
the  pose  is  not  always  consistently  maintained,  and  there 
are  times  when  Byron  sinks  in  his  minor  lyrics  to  the 
sentimentality  —  rarely  to  the  mere  prettiness  —  of  his 
friend,  Thomas  Moore.  Perhaps  it  is  not  fair  to  look  to 
the  lyric,  with  its  limitations  of  unity  and  definite  struc- 
ture, or  to  the  sonnet's  scanty  plot  of  ground,  for  the  wide 
descriptive  eloquence,  the  fervor  that  images  of  the  past 
call  forth,  the  grasp  of  comedy,  and  the  Titan's  wielding 


THE  ROJ^LVNTIC  REVIVAL  173 

force  of  scorn  and  satire  that  mark  this  glorious  Lucifer 
of  the  romantic  morning. 

No  greater  contrast  can  be  imagined  than  that  which 
exists  between  Byron  and  Shelley,  in  whom  the  former 
recognized,  as  did  few  of  his  contemporaries,  a  rival  to 
his  own  posthumous  fame.  That  the  stock  of  the  mad 
Byrons  should  have  produced  a  genius  who  wrote  comedy, 
sentiment,  and  satire,  and  lived  tragedy,  is  not  in  itself 
surprising.  That  a  race  of  fox-hunting  squires,  aristo- 
cratic, mundane,  and  unimaginative,  should  have  sent 
forth  a  scion  that  contradicted  every  one  of  the  family 
traits,  a  passionate  and  impractical  reformer,  an  inspired 
rhapsodist  in  song  and  England's  arch- lyrical  poet  — 
surely  such  an  outcome  is  enough  to  stagger  the  doc- 
trine of  heredity.  Nor  did  Shelley's  surroundings  do 
anything  to  modify  these  strange  contradictions.  Byron 
tasted  the  world's  pleasures  and  retained  a  relish  for  them 
even  after  he  had  assured  himself  of  their  vanity.  Shelley 
was  wholly  unconventional,  and  led  always  less  by  his 
passions  than  by  his  sensibilities  and  impulses,  which  were 
commonly  as  unguidod  by  judgment  as  to  consequences 
as  his  reforming  tlieories  were  unsustained  by  a  consid- 
eration of  the  means  to  their  attainment.  In  the  word 
remorse  can  bo  found  the  key  to  the  contrasted  tem- 
peraments of  these  two  remarkable  men.  Every  act  of 
Byron's  life  produced  its  recoil;  every  sin  walked  with  its 
shadow.  Defiant,  wanton,  and  wilful  as  were  most  of 
Byron's  deflections  from  the  conventional  morality  of  his 
day,  the  basis  of  such  a  man's  nature  is  moral.   The  moral 


174  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

world  of  Shelley  had  no  shadows;  no  act  was  rated  by  its 
consequences,  and  consequences  were  neither  foreseen 
nor,  when  untoward,  deplored;  Shelley  was  absolutely 
unmoral.  He  could  never  be  got  to  understand,  for  ex- 
ample, that  he  was  morally  responsible  for  the  suicide 
of  his  first  wife,  Harriet,  or  that  the  court  was  otherwise 
than  tyrannically  unjust  in  depriving  him  of  the  custody 
of  their  children  after  his  desertion.  When  a  literal  inter- 
pretation of  his  own  rebel  code  as  to  freedom  in  love  took 
him  abroad  with  Mary  Godwin,  and  he  heard,  as  he  had 
to  hear,  that  Harriet  and  their  children  were  unhappy, 
he  suggested  that  they  join  him  and  Mary,  not  in  aban- 
doned cynicism,  but  under  the  propulsion  of  a  new  and 
childish  impulse,  that  it  was  a  pity  that  any  one  should 
be  unhappy.  A  sense  of  humor  might  have  saved  Shelley 
from  this  preposterous  proposition;  but  he  had  scarcely 
an  atom  of  humor  in  his  inconsequential  make-up.  Hence 
it  happens  that  one  of  the  kindest  and  most  impulsively 
generous  of  men,  where  immediate  acts  were  concerned, 
practised  a  heartless  selfishness  and  disregard  for  others 
that  made  him,  when  his  theories  "counter  to  God,  mar- 
riage and  the  constitution  of  England"  were  remembered 
against  him,  even  more  abhorred  by  the  proper,  the  con- 
ventional, and  the  godly  of  his  time  than  Byron. 

The  poetry  of  Shelley  is  throughout  unworldly  and  un- 
ruly, unsubstantial  as  to  substance,  all  but  perfect  in 
its  art.  His  reforming  impulse  that  embraced,  in  his  im- 
aginativeness, the  entire  world  and  the  starry  interspaces, 
worked  itself  out  in  anathemas  of  dungeons,  tyrants,  and 


THE  ROJklANTIC  REVIVAL  175 

iniquitous  law  and  in  the  apotheosis  of  freedom,  liberty, 
and,  above  all,  love.  Nature,  in  the  Wordsworthian 
sense  of  the  revealing  beauty  of  even  the  tiniest  flower, 
Shelley  knows  nothing  of;  nature  in  Shelley's  poetry  is 
light,  ether,  cloud,  atmosphere,  or,  if  he  descends  to  earth, 
rock,  chasm,  cave  (a  favorite  word  of  his),  or  the  ever- 
changing  sea  with  its  depths,  "green  and  cavernous."  It 
has  been  remarked  that  "his  chief  nature  poem,  'To  a 
Skylark,'  loses  the  bird  in  the  air,  and  only  realizes  a 
voice  and  'unbodied  joy. '"^  Shelley's  landscapes  are 
wide  and  the  sky  chiefly  appears  in  them ;  details  are  hope- 
lessly unimportant  and  often  disturbed  as  in  a  dream. 
He  observes  nature  only  in  her  large  features  and  in  her 
cataclysms.  In  the  passion  of  Shelley  there  is  light,  ra- 
diance, and  scintillation,  even  at  times  iridescence,  but 
little  warmth,  steady  color,  or  glow.  Human  feeling  be- 
comes, a.s  it  were,  rarefied  in  Shelley's  hands.  The  "Epi- 
psychidion"  is  a  rhapsodic  apotheosis  of  abstract  love, 
however  Emilia  Viviani  may  have  intervened  to  fix  on  a 
momentary  object  the  ranging  eye  of  the  poet.  He  knew 
Keats  only  by  his  poetry,  when  indignation  at  his  alleged 
murder  by  the  Edinburgh  reviewers  prompted  his  invi- 
tation to  Keats  to  join  him  in  Italy  and  fired  his  muse 
to  an  <  Afpiisite  poetic  exjjression  of  .abstract  friendship 
in  ".Vdonais,"  which  takes  its  place  for  all  time  beside 
Milton's  "Lycidas."  And  when  Shelley  raises  his  voice 
to  the  praise  of  beauty,  it  is  neither  a  hymn  to  beauty 
earthly  or  spiritual,  Spenser's  distinction,  but  a  "Hymn 
'  Symun.s,  The  Itomantic  Movement,  p.  'itiO, 


176  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

to  Intellectual  Beauty."  Indeed,  to  Shelley  love  itself 
is  only  a  fitful  ecstatic  kind  of  friendship,  and  friend- 
ship a  higher  type  of  love,  because  less  agitated  by  the 
emotions  of  sex  that  interfere  with  its  purity  and  serenity. 
Few  poets  have  been  visited  with  more  beautiful  ideas 
than  Shelley  or  in  greater  numbers;  and  few  have  been 
more  consistently  animated  by  noble  thoughts  and  aspira- 
tions. Base  things  and  unclean  have  no  place  in  his  writ- 
ings. He  seems  to  have  been  impervious  to  the  dirt  of  life 
that  at  times  spatters  the  best  of  his  fellow-mortals.  Al- 
though he  recurs  with  a  sort  of  fascination  to  images  of 
death,  crime,  and  horror,  no  poet,  it  has  been  remarked, 
has  touched  such  things  so  absolutely  without  defilement. 
There  is  an  elemental  pure-mindedness  about  Shelley 
that  made  his  choice  of  such  a  theme,  for  example,  as  The 
Cenci,  like  his  treatment  of  it,  one  might  almost  say  ab- 
solutely innocent. 

As  to  the  quality  that  makes  poetry  lyrical,  it  may  be 
affirmed  literally  that  Shelley  outsings  all  the  English 
poets.  For  pure  melody,  for  an  exquisite  adaptation  of 
the  sounds  of  words  in  their  succession  to  the  meaning  of 
the  thought,  for  rhapsodic  outbursts  and  sustained  flights 
on  the  sweeping  aerial  pinions  of  song,  there  is  no  one  his 
peer.  Take,  for  example,  the  ease  and  lithe  rapidity  of 
these  two  stanzas  of  invocation  "To  Night": 

Swiftly  walk  o'er  the  western  wave. 

Spirit  of  Night! 
Out  of  the  misty  eastern  cave,  — 
WTiere,  all  the  long  and  lone  daylight. 


THE  RO^L\NTIC  REVR' AL  177 

Thou  wovest  dreams  of  joy  and  fear. 
Which  make  thee  terrible  and  dear,  — 
Swift  be  thy  flight! 

Wrap  thy  form  in  a  mantle  gray. 

Star-inwrought! 
Blind  with  thine  hair  the  eyes  of  Day; 
Kiss  her  until  she  be  wearied  out. 
Then  wander  o'er  city,  and  sea,  and  land, 
Touching  all  with  thine  opiate  wand  — 

Come,  long-sought! 

or  the  completeness  of  this  little  lyric: 

Music,  when  soft  voices  die. 
Vibrates  in  the  memory; 
Odors,  when  sweet  violets  sicken. 
Live  within  the  sense  they  quicken. 

Rose  leaves,  when  the  rose  is  dead. 
Are  heaped  for  the  beloved's  bed; 
And  so  thy  thoughts,  when  thou  art  gone. 
Love  itself  shall  slumber  on. 

In  the  "Indian  Serenade,"  the  rhapsodic  "Skylark," 
the  hoauliful  "Ode  to  the  West  Wind,"  and  many  other 
like  poems,  Shelley  has  reached  the  perfection  of  lyrical 
form  and  execution.  Nor  is  he  less  successful  in  what  the 
old  critics  used  to  call  "sustained  effort":  the  "Hymn  to 
Intellectual  Beauty,"  already  mentioned,  the  "Ode  to 
Liberty,"  the  beautiful  "Stanzas  written  in  Dejection," 
and  the  "Lines  written  in  the  Euganean  Hills,"  all  are 
flights  supported  at  a  surprisingly  high  level.  Shelley  is 
a  sovereign  metrist;  he  manages  trociiaic  and  anapestic 
metres  (as  in  "The  Sensitive  Plant")  with  a  perfect  mas- 


178  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

tery,  and  he  is  resourceful  in  metrical  devices  as  he  is 
inventive  of  new  and  elaborate  stanzas.  The  "Stanzas 
written  in  Dejection "  are  Spenserian  save  that  octosyl- 
lables have  been  substituted  for  decasyllabics,  although 
the  final  alexandrine  is  preserved;  the  "  Ode  to  Naples  " 
is  elaborately  Pindaric.  Yet  with  all  this  melody,  beauty, 
radiance,  enthusiasm,  and  song,  why  is  it  that  Shelley  can 
never  wholly  satisfy?  This  inspired  singer  is  not  remark- 
able for  his  thought  (beautiful  and  elevating  as  it  com- 
monly is),  for  his  wisdom,  insight,  or  any  of  those  "hu- 
mane" qualities  that  offer  us  "the  consolation  and  the 
stay"  that  literature  can  give.  This  poet,  drunk  with  the 
wine  of  heaven  and  infatuated  with  the  glories  of  the  sky, 
bids  us  only  to  look  afar  off  into  space,  where  light  is  azure 
and  gleaming  and  clouds  are  lit  with  rose  and  gold.  And 
for  those  of  us  who  as  yet  have  our  feet  on  the  soil  of  a 
habitable  globe,  a  diet  of  sunset,  however  uplifting,  can 
not  alone  suffice.  There  are  those  who  believe  that  Shel- 
ley's limitations  were  the  price  that  he  paid  for  his  match- 
less gift  of  song.  However  that  may  be,  the  adjectives, 
impracticable,  unavailing,  and  unsatisfying,  are  as  applic- 
able to  Shelley  and  his  poetry  as  are  winged,  luminous, 
angelic,  and  divine. 

If  Shelley  is  the  poet  of  the  air,  Keats  is  the  poet  of 
the  earth,  that  beautiful  green  world  in  which  it  is  a  pre- 
sent joy  sensuously  to  live,  alive  to  the  colors,  the  scents, 
and  sounds  that  nature  lavishes,  and  conscious  only  too 
poignantly  of  their  fragility  and  of  the  fragility  of  man 
among  them.  Shelley  had  the  reform  of  a  world  at  heart. 


THE  ROMANTIC  REVIVAL  179 

if  not  always  on  his  hands;  poetry  was  the  light  of  heaven, 
let  into  dark  places  to  purify  and  dispel  the  mist,  fog,  and 
contagion  of  the  wrong  that  man  has  done  to  man.  Byron 
had  his  attitude  to  maintain  before  a  listening  world,  his 
singing  robes  becomingly  to  drape  about  the  figure  of  the 
most  interesting  lord  and  poet  of  his  time;  poetry  was  the 
vehicle,  waveringly  sincere  and  insincere,  of  a  great  per- 
sonality. To  Keats,  alone  among  his  fellows,  was  poetry 
alike  a  means  and  an  end;  and  he  showed  a  singleness  of 
heart  in  his  devotion  to  it  to  be  paralleled  only  among 
the  painters.  In  view  of  his  poetic  achievement,  the  cir- 
cumstance that  the  father  of  Keats  had  once  been  a  groom 
is  as  irrelevant  as  the  fact  that  the  mother  of  Ben  Jonson 
married  a  bricklayer.  Neither  the  education  nor  the  as- 
sociations of  Keats  were  vulgar;  and,  save  possibly  for 
Hunt,  no  nickname  of  passing  criticism  was  more  gratui- 
tous than  that  of  "  the  Cockney  School,"  applied  to  Lamb, 
Hunt,  and  Keats,  men  of  personality  and  art  so  different. 
In  any  estimation  of  Keats,  the  brevity  of  his  life  and 
the  tragedy  that  ended  it  must  be  taken  into  account. 
Keats  was  dead  before  his  twenty-sixth  birthday.  For 
months  he  had  known  that  he  was  doomed,  and  the  suf- 
ferings of  his  malady  were  exasperated  to  the  degree  of 
torture  by  the  thought  that  he  must  leave  this  beautiful 
visible  world  with  its  inspiration  for  poetry,  and  a  fame 
among  poets,  great  indeed,  but  incomi)lete.  The  notion 
that  Koafs  was  a  weakling,  mawkishly  sentimental  and 
uncontrolled,  has  long  been  given  over.  Keats  was  a  man, 
and,  face  to  face  with  dc.ilh,  he  displayed  an  admirable 


180  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

intellectual  fortitude.  But  never  has  poet  possessed 
nerves  strung  to  a  finer,  a  more  delicate  sense  of  beauty; 
and  never  has  artist  distilled  out  of  beauty  a  joy  so  ex- 
quisite and  complete.  Keats  is  a  close  and  loving  ob- 
server of  nature;  but  he  sees  only  the  beautiful  in  her. 
Her  warfare,  her  cruelty  and  deprivation,  he  neither  sees 
nor  knows;  nor  does  he  translate  her  in  her  significance  to 
the  spirit  of  man.  Keats,  with  all  his  wealth  of  imagery, 
is  unequalled  in  his  precision  of  detail;  what  he  sees  he 
sees  clearly,  producing  his  effects  of  atmosphere  by  a 
cumulative  mass  of  individual  images  rather  than  by  a 
Shelleian  endeavor  to  paint  light.  Keats  is  the  antithesis 
poetically  of  Wordsworth,  in  place  of  whose  artistic  thrift 
he  practised  a  spendthrift  liberality,  in  place  of  whose 
scrutinizing  search  for  the  hidden  meaning  of  things,  he 
was  content  to  blazon  in  a  gorgeous  heraldry  of  his  own 
their  outward  glories. 

With  our  attention  concentrated  on  our  subject  we 
must,  to  be  logical,  exclude  some  of  the  most  distinctive 
poetry  of  Keats,  Endymion,  Hyperion,  Lamia,  and  that 
marvellous  bit  of  detailed  description  the  unfinished 
"Eve  of  St.  Mark,"  as  well  as  the  exquisitely  finished 
"Eve  of  St.  Agnes."  The  shorter  and  more  strictly  lyr- 
ical poems,  with  much  that  was  immature  and  more  that 
was  only  posthumously  published,  include  at  least  a  score 
of  poems  that  yield  to  none  in  our  language  for  sustained 
and  superlative  excellence  and  beauty.  The  splendid 
Odes  "To  a  Nightingale,"  "On  a  Grecian  Urn,"  "Bards 
of  Passion,"  and  the  jovial  "Lines  on  the  Mermaid  Tav- 


THE  RO^L\NTIC  REVIVAL  181 

ern,"  couched  in  the  lithe  octosyllables  the  Elizabethan 
secret  of  which  Keats  surprised,  the  beautiful  lines  "To 
Autumn,"  the  creed  of  the  romanticists  set  forth  in  the 
fervid  lines  "Sleep  and  Poetry,"  and  "I  stood  tiptoe  upon 
a  little  hill  "  (though  these  are  not  strictly  lyric)  —  who 
does  not  know  them  as  among  the  choicest  of  English 
poems  ?  Keats  wrote  many  sonnets,  not  all  of  them 
equally  successful,  some  of  them,  such  as  the  one  "On 
first  Looking  into  Chapman's  Homer,"  "To  Fame," 
"The  Grasshopper  and  Cricket,"  among  the  best  in  the 
language.  The  following,  not  much  quoted  in  antholo- 
gies, has  a  grace  of  its  own: 

Nymph  of  the  downward  smile  and  sidelong  glance. 

In  what  diviner  moments  of  the  day 

Art  thou  most  lovely  ?  When  R(mc  far  astray 
Into  the  labyrinths  of  sweet  utterance. 
Or  when  .serenely  wand'ring  in  u  trance 

Of  sober  thought  ?    Or  when  starting  away 

With  careless  robe  to  meet  the  morning  ray 
Thou  spar'st  the  flowers  in  thy  mazy  dance  ? 
Haply  't  is  when  thy  ruby  lips  part  sweetly. 

And  so  remain  because  thou  listenest: 
But  thf)ii  to  j)lease  wert  nurtured  so  completely 

That  I  can  never  tell  what  mood  is  best. 
I  shall  as  socjn  pronounce  which  Grace  more  neatly 

Trips  it  before  .Vpolio  liian  the  rest. 

Hut  such,  after  all,  is  not  the  most  distinctive  work  of 
Keats.  It  is  the  touch  of  magic  that  presaged  the  pre- 
RaphacHtcsand  the  Celtic  revival  for  which  Keats  stands 
historirally  momorablo.  This  is  the  touch  of  "La  Ik'lle 
Dame  sans  Merci"  which  has  all  the  magical  charm  and 


182  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

the  weird  suggestiveness  of  "Christabel"  itself,  without 
the  waves  and  passes  of  legerdemain  that  mark  that 
famous  effort. 


I  saw  pale  kings,  and  princes  too. 

Pale  warriors,  death-pale  were  they  all; 

Who  cry'd  —  "La  belle  Dame  sans  Merci 
Hath  thee  in  thrall!" 

I  saw  their  starv'd  lips  in  the  gloam 

With  horrid  warning  gaped  wide. 
And  I  awoke  and  found  me  here 

On  the  cold  hill's  side. 

And  this  is  why  I  sojourn  here 

Alone  and  palely  loitering, 
Thougli  the  sedge  is  wither'd  from  the  lake. 

And  no  birds  sing. 

This  is  the  absolute  simplicity  of  perfectly  assured  art. 
It  is  difficult  to  follow  those  that  find  in  Keats  a  decadent 
note.  Sensitive  to  every  impression  of  the  senses  and 
sensuous  in  the  enjoyment  of  them,  Keats,  judged  at 
large,  is  pure  as  mother  earth  is  pure.  Disease  wrought 
havoc  on  the  nerves  of  the  man  and  he  cried  out  in  an- 
guish; but  his  mind  ruled  him  to  the  last,  as  it  ruled  to 
shape  and  inform  his  imperishable  poetry. 

Youngest  of  the  great  lights  of  the  romantic  school, 
Keats  was  the  first  to  die.  In  1822,  the  year  following, 
Shelley  was  drowned;  and  two  years  after,  Byron  died  of 
fever  at  Missolonghi  in  Greece.  Neither  Keats  nor  Shel- 
ley left  the  world  assured  of  the  fame  in  store  for  him. 
The  public  that  called  for  ten  editions  of  Irish  Melodies  in 


THE  ROM\NTIC  RE\TVAL  183 

some  twenty  years,  that  approved  Rogers  and  Campbell, 
and  read  the  narratives  of  Scott  for  lyrical  poetry, 
could  have  made  nothing  of  the  ecstasies  of  Shelley  or  the 
raptures  of  Keats.  The  poetry  of  Byron  was  of  a  more 
comprehensible  nature,  and,  aided  by  his  lordship  and  the 
scandals  about  him,  compelled  attention  and  admiration, 
every  voice,  even  those  raised  against  him  adding  fresh 
laurels  to  his  fame.  During  the  twenties  and  early  thirties 
Byron  carried  everything  before  him.  He  silenced  Scott 
and  threw  Wordsworth  for  the  nonce  into  an  almost  total 
eclipse.  To  the  young  and  romantic  he  was  the  ideal  poet 
and  hero;  and  the  few  who  hesitated  to  attempt  to  write 
like  him  at  least  endeavored  to  despond  and  despair  with 
him.  Deeper  influences,  however,  were  also  at  work  in 
poetry.  The  tide  of  Wordsworth  was  soon  to  return  bear- 
ing back  what  was  best  in  his  poetry  to  final  acceptance. 
The  popularity  of  Burns  and  Scott  continued  potent,  es- 
pecially in  Scotland.  More  important,  the  study  of  Eliza- 
bethan authors,  to  which  Lamb  and  Ilazlitt  had  pointed 
a  way  that  Coleridge  had  irregularly  blazed,  was  soon  to 
manifest  itself  in  a  remarkable  series  of  dramas,  belong- 
ing in  point  of  comi)osition  mostly  to  the  years  following 
the  death  of  Byron,  and  the  work  of  Wells,  Darlcy,  Home, 
Wade,  and,  above  all,  of  Beddoes.  The  influence  of  Cole- 
ridge, Shelley,  and  Keats  on  younger  poets  came  later 
and  belongs,  in  its  fullness,  to  the  new  wave  of  roman- 
ticism that  animated  so  variously  the  poets  of  the  reign 
of  Victoria. 

Descending,  then,  to  I  he  many  lesser  men  who  added 


184  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

their  voices  to  this  tuneful  lyrical  chorus,  there  was  the 
lyrically  devotional  John  Keble,  a  voice  premonitory  of 
the  Oxford  Movement  to  come.  The  year  1827  has  been 
described  as  "a  kind  of  annus  mirabilis  oi  religious  verse." 
In  it  appeared  not  only  The  Christian  Poet,  one  of  the 
many  volumes  of  copious  James  Montgomery,  but  The 
Course  of  Time  by  Robert  PoUok,  the  posthumously  pub- 
lished Hymns  of  Bishop  Heber,  and  Keble's  first  volume, 
The  Christian  Year.  Modern  times  have  not  been  product- 
ive of  writers  of  hymns  and  devotional  verse  who  have 
happened  likewise  to  be  poets  of  mark.  None  of  the 
names  just  mentioned  contradict  this  assertion,  nor  do 
those  of  Bishop  Mant  nor  Milman  the  historian.  Keble 
alternates  faint  echoes  of  the  Wordsworthian  cult  of  na- 
ture with  an  earnest  and  ritualistic  piety.  Only  a  fellow 
churchman  or  a  Tory  critic  could  have  thought  for  a  mo- 
ment of  comparing  Keble's  poetry,  in  its  uniform  clerical 
black  and  white,  with  gorgeous  and  fervid  George  Her- 
bert.^ A  far  truer  poet  was  John  Clare,  who  was  born  a 
pauper  and  died  insane ;  but  who  sang  with  loving  tender- 
ness and  in  true  poetic  spirit  of  the  natural  objects  that 
surrounded  his  life  of  toil  and  misery  in  the  village  and 
country-side  that  inspired  him.  There  were,  too,  the 
Scotchmen,  John  Gibson  Lockhart,  biographer  of  Scott, 
who  opened  up  Spanish  minstrelsy  to  British  readers 
in  his  Ancient  Spanish  Ballads,  translated  with  a  spirit 
that  gives  them  a  place  of  their  own  in  English  poetry; 

*  For  a  sane  estimate  of  Keble,  see  A.  C.  Benson,  "Poetry  of  Keble," 
Essays,  1896,  p.  184. 


THE  RO>L\NTIC  REVIVAL  185 

William  Thorn,  who  continued  Scottish  traditional  song 
and  balladry  where  Tannahill  and  Hogg  had  left  it; 
and  William  Motherwell,  who  tried  lyrics  in  the  man- 
ner of  nearly  everybody  and  succeeded  in  bettering 
Campbell  at  least  and  in  tapping,  in  his  Norse  Poems, 
a  new  lyrical  vein.  A  choicer  spirit  informs  the  sonnets 
and  other  lyrics  of  Hartley  Coleridge,  who  inherited  all  his 
father's  inertia  and  hesitating  indolence  with  an  insuf- 
ficient draught  of  his  poetic  genius.  Hartley  Coleridge's 
master  and  model  was  Wordsworth  and,  what  is  more, 
Wordsworth  at  his  best;  yet  despite  some  memorable  son- 
nets and  a  song  or  two,  such  as  "She  is  not  fair  to  out- 
ward view"  (of  which  Wordsworth  himself  might  have 
been  proud),  both  the  poet  and  his  work  leave  on  the 
mind  an  impression  of  ineflPectiveness.  Passing  Thomas 
Love  Peacock,  best  recollected,  notwithstanding  a  lyric 
or  so  of  distinction,  for  his  incomparable  wit  and  humor 
in  rime,  John  Hamilton  Reynolds,  friend  and  companion 
in  poetic  adventure  of  Keats,  and  Laraan  Blanchard, 
preacIuT,  jester,  and  writer  of  society  verses,  we  reach  in 
Hood  the  most  gifted  of  the  poets  that  fall  between  the 
early  romanticists  and  the  great  Victorians. 

It  was  the  misfortune  of  Tiioinas  Hood  that  he  was 
compelled  to  earn  his  bread  by  his  pen,  and  that  his  clever 
wit  and  a  readiness  amounting  to  genius  as  a  punster 
should  have  obscured,  to  those  who  knew  him  only 
pofjularly,  the  finer  qualities  that  distinguisli  his  serious 
j)0(lry.  Hood's  life  was  one  of  coiifiiiucd  struggle  against 
ill  fortune  and  ill  he.iilli;  and  he  maintained  it  bravely, 


186  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

using  his  humor  as  a  mask  for  suffering  and  a  relief  from 
the  drudgery  of  daily  literary  toil.  Most  of  the  great 
poets,  whose  names  we  have  passed  in  review,  were  nota- 
ble for  the  singleness  of  their  mood,  when  all  is  told:  the 
meditative  calm  of  Wordsworth,  the  eloquent  despair  of 
Byron,  Keats  and  the  apotheosis  of  beauty.  Hood  suf- 
fered in  his  versatility,  which  ranged  from  the  wildest  fun 
and  nonsense  to  a  mastery  of  tragical  remorse,  of  super- 
natural dread  and  of  pathos  almost  unequalled,  from 
the  twist  of  a  word  into  an  epigram  to  a  Keats-like  delight 
in  the  details  of  the  changing  seasons  ("Autumn"),  and 
to  sonnets  (those  especially  to  "Death"  and  "Silence  "for 
example)  of  a  depth  and  gravity  that  Wordsworth  might 
not  have  disdained.  The  hand  of  Hood  is  firm  and  he  is 
always  the  controlling  artist  in  his  best  work,  excelling  in 
metrical  inventiveness  and  daring,  as  in  the  marvellously 
sustained  and  absolutely  successful  dactylics  and  triple 
rimes  of  "The  Bridge  of  Sighs."  But  if  Hood  shared  some 
of  these  poetical  gifts  with  the  greater  poets,  in  his  two 
most  famous  poems  (that  just  named  and  "The  Song  of 
the  Shirt"),  he  shared,  too,  that  bitter  indignation  at  the 
wrongs  and  sorrows  of  humanity  that  dignified  the  bald- 
ness of  Crabbe  and  roused  the  generous  eloquence  of 
Ebenezer  Elliott  in  his  Corn  Law  Rhymes.  Only  Hood 
could  have  lifted  the  slave  of  the  needle  and  the  trag- 
edy of  lost  womanhood  into  the  rarefied  atmosphere  of 
poetry;  for  poetry  these  two  universal  songs  are,  despite 
their  bitterness  and  their  scathing  arraignment  of  the 
cruelty  of  man  to  his  own  kind.  The  pity,  the  tender- 


f 


THE   ROMANTIC   REVIVAL  187 

ness,  the  certainty  and  outspoken  naturalness  of  it  all 
—  there  are  no  poems  of  their  kind  such  as  these;  and 
their  burning  words,  from  the  world's  utilitarian  point 
of  view,  are  worth  many  odes  to  skylarks,  nightingales, 
and  linnets,  for  the  material  betterment  that  they 
wrought. 

It  might  be  difficult  to  find  four  writers  more  in  con- 
trast as  men  and  authors  than  Macaulay,  Praed,  Mangan, 
and  Barnes;  indeed,  only  their  likeness  in  years  and  the 
circumstance  that  they  all  began  to  write  well  before  the 
accession  of  Queen  Victoria  could  justify  the  treatment  of 
them  together.  As  to  his  verse.  Lord  Macaulay  is  the 
lineal  descendant  of  Sir  Walter  Scott;  for  to  both,  the 
picturesque  aspect  of  history,  with  a  vivid  reproduction 
of  what  each  takes  to  be  the  mood  of  the  time,  is  the  main 
consideration.  Macaulay  wrote  the  ringing  lines  of  his 
"  Battle  of  Naseby  "  when  he  was  twenty-four,  little  exag- 
gerating his  own  Whig  spirit  in  the  mask  of  his  "Obadiah 
Bind-their-Kings-in-Chains-and-their-Nobles-with-Links- 
of-Iron";  and  it  was  to  this  method  that  he  afterwards 
adhered  in  his  popular  Lays  of  Ancient  Rome.  Whether 
these  swinging  rhetorical  verses  are  to  be  designated 
poetry  any  more  than  Scott's  ready  narratives  in  verse 
may  be  argued  by  those  interested  in  these  nice  distinc- 
tions. Macaulay 's  lines  vibrate  like  blasts  of  the  trumpet, 
and  they  are  as  clamorous  and  as  brazen.  But  the  instru- 
ment is  fitted  to  the  tune,  and  wiiether  we  prefer  the  lute 
or  the  zither  is  a  matter  imperfiiicnt.  The  impetus  that 
Macaulay  gave  to  the  martial  historical  lyric  has  con- 


188  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

tinued  in  a  well-defined  line  of  writers  to  our  own  day. 
Motherwell,  with  his  " Cavalier's  Song"  and  "Trooper's 
Ditty,"  was  prior  it  is  true,  and  Aytoun's  Lays  of  the 
Scottish  Cavaliers,  1848,  were  perhaps  equally  inspired  by 
Scott.  But  with  Richard  Monckton  Milnes's  Poems 
Legendary  and  Historical,  1844,  we  have  honorable  if  not 
always  successful  imitation;  and  with  Sir  Francis  Doyle, 
successor  to  Matthew  Arnold  in  the  chair  of  poetry  at 
Oxford  much  later,  we  have  Macaulay's  metallic  heroic 
note,  now  translated  with  the  current  of  the  time  to  the 
scene  of  England's  broad  world  empire,  and  suggesting, 
we  may  feel  sure,  the  fanfare  of  imperialism  that  is  still 
resounding  in  our  ears.  Noble  and  stirring  poems  are 
Doyle's  "The  Private  of  the  Buffs  "  and  "The  Red  Thread 
of  Honor."  Less  notable,  though  stirred  by  the  martial 
spirit  of  the  moment,  are  the  lyrics  of  the  Crimean  War, 
Gerald  Massey's  War  Waits,  Sidney  Dobell's  England  in 
Time  of  War,  and  Dobell's  and  Alexander  Smith's  Sonnets 
of  the  War. 

Returning  to  pre-Victorian  times,  Winthrop  Mack- 
worth  Praed,  like  Macaulay,  was  a  brilliant  collegian  and 
trained  for  the  bar.  Like  Macaulay,  too,  Praed  com- 
bined authorship  with  a  busy  Parliamentary  career,  cut 
short  by  his  untimely  death,  in  1839,  at  the  age  of 
thirty-seven.  Praed  is  easily  the  first  among  the  poets 
who  wrote  vers  de  societe  in  his  day.  In  his  best  verses  of 
the  type,  he  habitually  treads  with  light  and  certain  step 
the  perilous  way  that  winds  between  the  heartlessness  of 
satire  and  sentiment  grown  mawkish.    In  absolute  con- 


THE   ROMANTIC   REVIVAL  189 

trast  with  this  self-contained  and  sufficient  art  of  Praed, 
so  observant  and  so  artistically  objective,  is  the  original 
and  intensely  personal  poetry  of  James  Clarence  Mangan. 
Of  humble  origin  in  Dublin,  Mangan  toiled  for  years  as  a 
copyist  in  a  scrivener's  office,  dividing  his  hard-earned 
pittance  with  relatives  needier  than  himself.  Of  a  shrink- 
ing nature,  given  to  analysis  of  his  own  feelings,  in  ill 
health  and  intemperate  in  desperation  at  times,  Mangan 
passed  a  life  of  such  seclusion  that  we  really  know  very 
little  of  its  details.  He  appears  to  have  mastered  several 
out-of-the-way  languages,  though  his  native  Irish  was 
apparently  not  among  them;  and  he  left  behind  him  many 
poems  that  purported  to  be  translations  from  Hafiz, 
Mesihi,  and  other  oriental  poets;  as  others  were  modelled 
on  old  Gaelic  traditions,  though  how  closely  or  whether 
not  largely  his  own,  remain  matters  problematic.  Man- 
gan's  range  as  a  lyrist  is  limited,  but  intensely  the  expres- 
sion of  himself.  His  despair  rings  true  and  is  no  echo  of 
liyron's.  In  a  vivid  fKjem,  enlilK-d  "The  Nameless  One," 
he  bids  his  song  "roll  forth"  and 

Tell  how,  with  Renins  wasted, 
Bctraycfl  in  friendship,  hof(X)lcd  in  love, 
With  spirit  .shipwrecked,  and  young  hopes  blasted. 
He  .still,  still  .strove; 


And  tell  how  now,  amid  wreck,  and  sorrow. 

And  want,  and  sickness,  and  houseless  nights. 
He  hides  in  calmness  the  silent  morrow 
That  no  ray  li^;hLs. 

There  is  a  cry  of  I  lie  heart  in  lines  like  Ihe.sc  superior  even 


190  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

to  "Dark  Rosaleen,"  Mangan's  best  known  lyric  and  it- 
self a  glorious  allegorical  expression  of  fervid  patriotism. 
In  any  anthology  of  Irish  verse  Mangan  sits  among  the 
princes.  In  "Dark  Rosaleen"  and  elsewhere  he  appears 
to  have  anticipated  the  music  of  repetition  afterwards 
so  effectively  developed  by  Poe.  William  Barnes,  mem- 
orable for  his  poems  in  the  Dorset  dialect,  was  a  remark- 
ably versatile  man  alike  in  the  range  of  his  study  and 
literary  work  and  in  the  various  vocations  of  school- 
master, engraver,  musician,  and  philologist.  Barnes  is  no 
such  singer  as  we  find  even  among  some  of  the  lesser  fol- 
lowers of  Burns,  but  the  lyrical  spirit  is  in  him,  and  he  has 
distilled  genuine  poetry  out  of  the  familiar  happenings  of 
rural  life  and  raised  his  provincial  dialect  of  Dorsetshire 
to  a  place  in  literature. 

The  revival  of  the  literary  drama  that  came  between  the 
publication  of  Shelley's  Cenci,  in  1819,  and  the  accession 
of  Mctoria  cannot  be  discussed  here.  This  revival  was 
due,  in  the  main,  to  the  renewed  study  and  reading  of 
Elizabethan  drama,  and  the  occasional  lyrics  that  it  in- 
spired echo  those  of  the  old  age.  There  are  no  lyrics  in 
Wells's  Joseph  and  his  Brethren  with  which  this  revival 
began;  and  the  lyrical  poetry  of  Thomas  Wade,  especially 
his  sonnets,  justly  described  as  "thoughtful,  tender,  orig- 
inal, and  strong,"  does  not  occur  in  his  several  dramas.* 
The  varied  and  interesting  poetry,  too,  of  Richard  Henry 
Home,  dramatic,  epic,  narrative,  and  didactic,  yields 

*  Wade's  Fifty  Sonnets  are  reprinted    in  Literary  Anecdotes  of  the 
Nineteenth  Century,  1895,  London. 


THE  ROMANTIC   REVIVAL  191 

very  few  poems  that  are  strictly  lyrical.  The  lyrist  of  the 
group  is  that  strange  reincarnation  of  the  genius  that 
animated  Webster  or  Tourneur,  contorted  with  a  strand 
of  modern  introspection,  Thomas  Lovcll  Beddoes;  and  his 
is  an  isolated  and  distinctive  position  among  our  modern 
poets.  Beddoes  is  practically  a  man  of  a  single  work, 
Death's  Jest  Bool;  a  tragedy  of  rare  poetic  and  literary 
value,  published  in  1850,  the  year  after  the  poet's  death 
by  his  own  hand.  It  belongs  in  point  of  plan  and  composi- 
tion to  his  early  manhood.  Beddoes,  like  Wells,  held  com- 
plaisant mediocrity  in  a  haughty  disdain.  To  quote  his 
own  words :  "  It  is  good  to  be  tolerable,  or  intolerable,  in 
any  other  line;  but  Apollo  defend  us  from  brewing  all  our 
lives  at  the  quintessential  pot  of  the  smallest  ale  Par- 
nassian."^ The  lyrics  of  Beddoes  are  unequal  in  execution, 
however  the  animating  force  of  poetry  may  sustain  them. 
At  his  best,  for  a  weird  originality  of  thought  and  a  com- 
petence, if  not  always  a  music  of  expression,  they  will 
hold  their  own  with  the  best.  John  Webster  would  have 
compassed  the  effect  of  this  stanza  more  vigorously,  but 
hardly  would  ovoii  ho  have  bettered  il : 

'SOiiiif,'  .s(nil,  put  oil  .yijur  Ucsh,  and  come 
Willi  inc  into  the  silent  tomb, 

Our  bed  is  lovely,  dark,  and  sweet; 
The  earth  will  swinjj  us,  lus  .she  goes, 
IJ«-nealh  our  coverliil  of  snows, 

And  the  warm  leaden  shet't. 
Dear  and  <lear  is  their  poisoned  note, 

>  Quoted  by  II.  Clarnett  in  his  artieie  on  Heddoes,  Mile.M.  Porl.i  of  tlie 
Century,  Kcatn  to  Lyllon,  n.  d.,  p.  '>ii- 


192  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

The  little  snakes*  of  silver  throat. 
In  mossy  skulls  that  nest  and  lie. 
Ever  singing  "die,  oh!  die." 

As  to  the  other  names  of  dramatic  note  in  these  pre- 
Victorian  days,  the  songs  of  Sir  Henry  Taylor,  whether 
in  Philip  van  Artevelde  or  elsewhere,  are  really  pitiful  for 
a  Southeyan  of  such  estimable  repute;  and  those  of  Bul- 
wer.  Lord  Lytton,  which  are  equally  remote  from  the 
influences  of  our  earlier  poets,  belong  to  the  easy,  trivial 
school  of  Moore  and  Procter,  touched  with  the  prevalent 
Byronism. 

In  this  chapter  we  have  considered  the  leaders  of  the 
romantic  revival  and  enumerated  some  of  their  lesser 
brethren  who  wrote  lyrically.  We  have  treated  many 
who,  although  they  began  to  write  earlier,  wrote  on  into 
the  reign  of  Queen  Victoria.  We  must  defer  to  the  next 
chapter  such  as  began  to  write  only  in  her  reign  or  those 
whose  actual  poetical  activity  received  the  impetus  that 
placed  it  in  its  true  orbit  subsequent  to  the  queen's 
accession.  The  thirties  wrought  havoc  among  the  poets; 
Scott  and  Crabbe  died  in  1832,  Coleridge  and  Lamb  in 
1834,  Hogg  a  year  later.  Among  the  names  mentioned 
above,  Southey,  Hood,  and  Darley  lived  on  into  the 
forties,  the  two  latter  active  in  literature  to  the  last. 
Moore  closed  his  long  career  with  his  Poetical  Works  in  ten 
volumes,  1840-41,  and  lived  on  for  nearly  a  dozen  years; 
Hunt  wrote  to  the  last,  publishing  Stories  in  Verse  as 
late  as  1855,  four  years  before  his  death.  Procter's  work 
like  that  of  Peacock,  Elliott,  Wells,  and  several  others, 


THE   ROjMANTIC   REVIVAL  193 

belonged,  by  Victoria's  time,  to  the  past.  Wells  and  Pea- 
cock survived  into  the  seventies;  Taylor,  Barnes,  and 
Home,  into  the  eighties.  But  among  the  veterans  of 
early  nineteenth-century  poetry,  Wordsworth  and  Landor 
alone  continued  productive  far  into  the  reign.  Words- 
worth wrote  and  published  poetry  in  six  decades ;  Landor 
in  eight,  bridging  the  age  of  Cowper  and  that  of  Tenny- 
son, Browning,  and  Swinburne,  wliither  we  are  now  to 
follow  him. 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE   VICTORIAN   LYRISTS 

ITH  the  great  Victorian  laureate  dead,  even 
now  only  a  score  of  years,  and  his  throne 
unfilled,  however  occupied  —  as  who  could 
fill  that  spacious  chair  of  regal  poetic  state? 
—  it  seems  all  but  incredible  that  verse  of  Alfred  Tenny- 
son's should  have  seen  print  in  the  year  1826.  It  was  in 
that  year  that  Poems  by  Two  Brothers  (there  were  really 
three)  was  published  with  little  promise,  it  must  be  con- 
fessed, of  the  glory  that  was  to  come.  Nor  were  Tenny- 
son's first  unaided  poetical  efforts,  the  volumes  of  1830 
and  1832,  however  promising  to  discerning  minds,  wholly 
undeserving  of  the  disapproval  that  the  Quarterly  Review 
and  Blackwood's  meted  out  to  them.  But  Tennyson  was 
not  born  to  failure;  and,  unlike  most  men  of  sensitive 
poetic  endowment,  an  iron  will  nerved  him  to  snatch 
success  from  defeat.  For  ten  years  he  was  silent,  undi- 
verted by  temptation  to  other  occupations,  living  simply 
and  with  economy  as  he  untiringly  perfected  his  art;  and 
with  the  Poems  of  1842,  the  added  ones  and  those  revised, 
it  was  known  —  if  still  only  to  the  few  —  that  another 
great  English  poet  had  arisen  to  maintain  the  high  tra- 
ditions of  the  past.  The  Tennysons  were  gentle  folk, 
and  all  that  tradition,  restraint,  cultivated  surroundiogs. 


THE  VICTORIAN  LYRISTS  195 

college  life,  and  reverence  could  do  for  him  had  part  in 
the  poet's  education.  Neither  passion,  ill  health,  nor 
extreme  poverty  assailed  him;  and  soon  popular  acclaim 
was  his.  He  succeeded  Wordsworth  as  poet  laureate  in 
1850,  and  was  raised  to  the  peerage  as  Lord  Tennyson  in 
1884.  A  chronology  of  the  books  of  poems  of  Tennyson, 
contributed  to  the  Memoir  of  his  life  by  his  son,  comprises 
sixty-three  items  from  the  early  issues  just  mentioned  to 
a  complete  one  volume  edition  in  1894,  two  years  after 
the  poet's  death;  and  this  by  no  means  includes  all  separ- 
ate and  foreign  issues.  Tennyson's  later  years  reaped  a 
golden  reward,  and  the  popularity  of  his  poetry  in  his 
lifetime  was  such  as  no  English  poet  had  known  before 
him. 

Tennyson  grew  up  with  poetry  about  him.  His  two  bro- 
thers wrote  other  verse  besides  their  first  joint  endeavor. 
Charles,  who  took  the  name  of  Turner  on  succeeding  to 
his  uncle's  estates,  was  an  excellent  sonneteer  after  the 
Wordsworthian  manner.  Frederick,  after  a  first  volume. 
Days  and  Hours,  in  1854,  recurred  to  poetry  in  his  elder 
years,  and  more  resembles,  in  weaker  mould,  the  poetic 
lineaments  of  his  great  brother.  Both  suffered  from  his 
august  shadow  as  who  save  the  greatest  might  not  ? 
Tennyson's  friend,  tof),  Arthur  Hallam,  in  whose  memory 
he  wrote  the  magnificent  requiem,  "In  Memoriam,"  left 
at  his  untimely  death  some  estimable  minor  poetry;  and 
I'xlward  Fitzdorald,  whose  affectionate  enthusiasm  never 
allowed  that  lliere  was  a  greater  Tennyson  than  Ihat  of 
the  first  fruitage  of  the  volume  of  1842,  afterwards  at- 


196  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

tained  for  himself  an  enviable  popularity  as  one  who  bet- 
tered the  translations  that  he  made  to  give  to  the  dead, 
especially  in  Omar  Khayyam,  a  living  repute.  The  earliest 
literary  influence  on  Tennyson  was  indubitably  that  of 
Keats.  A  similar  definition  of  line,  clarity  of  vision,  capa- 
bility in  descriptive  detail,  and  limpidity  of  diction  are 
common  to  both;  and  both  are  ruled  by  the  spirit  of 
beauty.  But  Tennyson  has  neither  the  passion  of  Keats 
nor  his  sensuous  glow  of  color.  However,  Tennyson  did 
not  stop  here.  Wordsworth  in  his  narrative  poetry  and 
"subjective  view  of  nature,"  Spenser  in  his  pictorial 
mediaevalism,  Shakespeare  for  the  lilt  of  his  song  —  all 
these  had  Tennyson  studied.  There  are  touches  of  the 
Byronic  despair  in  Maud,  and  he  disdained  not  the  hec- 
tic art  of  the  pre-Raphaelites,  his  contemporaries,  in  an 
occasional  lyric,  though  neither  sits  naturally  upon  him. 
As  to  the  classics,  never  has  poet  so  absorbed  them  and 
so  skilfully  and  legitimately  employed  reminiscence  to 
illustrate  and  glorify  his  lines.  If  there  is  a  quality  in 
poetry  peculiarly  Tennyson's,  it  is  the  quality  of  distinc- 
tion. He  elevates  whatever  he  touches,  not  so  much  be- 
cause he  transfigures  common  things  as  because  of  his 
deft  selection  of  what  is  fit  for  noble  and  decorative  treat- 
ment. Tennyson  is  a  past  master  in  all  the  graces  of  his 
art;  awkwardness,  obscurity,  carelessness,  and  a  medium 
unfitted  to  the  poetical  ends  of  the  moment  are  intoler- 
able to  him  and,  in  his  finished  poetry,  unknown.  In  the 
realm  of  his  beautiful  art,  taste  rules  perennial;  however 
ornate  and  elaborate,  all  is  fitting,  moderate,  fashioned  to 


THE  VICTORLVN  LYRISTS  197 

a  nicety  and,  at  need,  restrained  to  the  artistic  purposes 
in  hand.  Tennyson  is  a  great  technician,  and  his  example 
has  raised  the  art  of  English  poetry  to  a  higher  level. 
This  is  especially  true  of  his  songs,  which  often  have  a 
witching  melody  of  words  combined  with  a  deeper  har- 
mony of  spirit  that  is  unmatchable  elsewhere.  Take,  for 
example,  the  wistful  passion  of  "O  that  't  were  possible," 
the  delicious  babble  of  the  "Song  of  the  Brook,"  the  tread 
of  arms  in  "The  Charge  of  the  Light  Brigade,"  and  a 
hundred  other  perfect  lyrics  our  very  familiarity  with 
which  causes  us  critically  to  do  them  less  than  justice. 
Take,  too,  on  the  score  of  its  novelty  as  well  as  its  beauty 
and  touch  with  modem  science,  this  supremely  original 
invocation  which  no  repetition  in  quotation  can  stale: 

Move  eastward,  happy  earth,  and  leave 

Yon  orange  sunset  waning  slow: 
From  fringes  of  the  faded  eve, 

O  happy  phinet,  ea.stward  go; 
Till  over  thy  dark  shoulder  glow 

Thy  silver  sislcr-wcjrid,  and  rise 

To  glass  herself  in  dewy  eyes 
That  watch  me  from  the  glen  below. 

Ah,  hear  me  with  thee,  smoothly  borne. 

Dip  forward  un<ler  starry  light. 
And  move  me  to  my  marriage-morn. 

And  rounrl  again  to  happy  nigiit. 

In  a  consideration  of  the  lyrical  poetry  of  Tennyson 
apart  from  his  dramas,  the  Idylls,  and  other  narrative 
verse,  we  are  confronted  with  tlio  increasing  diflirully  of 
preserving  a  clear  line  of  demarcation.    No  one  could 


198  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

pause  to  question  the  absolute  lyrical  quality  of  the  song 
in  "The  Brook,"  "Break,  break,  break,"  or  the  exquisite 
songs  of  The  Princess,  "The  splendor  falls"  and  "Tears, 
idle  tears."  But  there  are  scores  of  beautiful  poems  in 
Tennyson  the  essence  of  which  is  poetic  description,  which 
convey  none  the  less  the  impression  of  a  single  mood  how- 
ever they  may  suggest  a  situation.  A  lyrical  quality  in- 
heres in  them  all  to  a  greater  or  less  degree.  Such  are 
the  early  poems  on  fair  women,  "Mariana,"  "Madeline," 
and  the  rest,  of  which  it  has  been  profanely  said  that 
they  have  the  family  likeness  of  the  perfect,  conventional 
beauty  preserved  in  the  engravings  of  the  old  gift-books. 
But  such,  too,  in  fuller  degree,  are  the  beautiful  classic 
"Q^none,"  descriptive  and  narrative  to  a  certain  extent 
though  it  be,  the  tender  and  thoughtful  "De  Profundis," 
a  poem  of  solemn  welcome  to  the  poet's  new-born  son, 
dramatic  lyrics  such  as  "The  Two  Sisters,"  and  the  effect- 
ive and  touching  "Rizpah."  Even  "In  Memoriam," 
best  described  as  a  sequence  of  elegies  bound  together  by 
one  pervading  sense  of  irreparable  loss,  is  in  its  subject- 
ive introspection  as  truly  lyrical  as  "Adonais"  itself.  Of 
the  four  great  English  elegies  of  friendship,  "Lycidas," 
"Adonais,"  "Thyrsis,"  and  "In  Memoriam,"  the  last 
is  the  most  elaborate,  the  longest,  and  that  in  which, 
without  losing  any  of  its  poignancy,  mourning  friendship 
is  most  effectively  universalized.  Less  than  half  of  the 
poem  deals  directly  with  Tennyson's  sorrow  for  his  dead 
friend,  Arthur  Ilallam;  the  rest  displays  the  author's 
philosophy  of  life  in  terms  the  beauty,  the  poetic  charm, 


THE  VICTORLVN  LYRISTS  199 

and  music  of  which  are  its  best  claim  to  the  regard  of  pos- 
terity. Yet  it  is  just  this  intrusion  into  poetry  of  his 
philosophy  and  what  is  far  worse  his  poHtics  (both  of 
which  are  ephemeral)  that  gave  the  poem  its  popularity; 
as  it  is  this  same  intrusion  which  has  caused  the  great 
repute  of  the  poet  sensibly  to  wane  in  the  generation  that 
knew  not  his  works  when  they  canvassed  living  issues. 
Tennyson  is  conventional  in  his  religion,  his  politics,  his 
philosophy,  and  in  his  criticism  of  life,  and  he  threads 
ever  with  circumspection  the  safe,  the  unenthusiastic, 
the  uninspired  middle  way.  For  the  great  problems  of 
life  and  death,  however  he  may  invoke  the  discoveries  of 
sciences  and  the  ratiocinations  of  rationalistic  thought, 
he  has  no  real  solution,  and  his  religiosity  in  the  face  of 
his  half-hearted  scepticism,  leaves  us  almost  in  doubt  at 
times  as  to  his  candor.  Unquestionably  there  was  in  this 
great  artist  a  fastidious  shrinking  from  the  decisive,  the 
disagreeable,  the  inevitable,  a  want  of  sympathy  with 
much  in  life  that  has  appealed  and  ever  will  appeal  to  the 
generous-hearted  and  truly  liberal-minded,  and  hence  a 
frequent  substitution  of  sentiment  for  feeling,  of  the 
correct  attitude  (all  things  considered)  for  that  divine 
extravagance  and  forgetfulness  of  self  that  constitutes  the 
magnanimous  partisanship  of  a  generous  soul.  Tennyson 
became  deservedly  the  most  j)oi)ular  of  Victorian  |)oets 
because,  with  a  distinction  of  poetic  style  and  diction  all 
but  unmatched  and  an  artistry  incomparable,  he  con- 
trived to  translate  the  current  ideas  of  his  time  into  the 
terms  of  exquisite  poetry  and  to  conjure,  as  with  a  ma- 


800  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

gician's  wand,  a  transfigured  picture  of  a  chivalrous  age 
that  never  was  save  in  the  poet's  picturesque  imagina- 
tion. Tennyson's  poetry  is  like  some  commodious  and 
hospitable  modern  structure  that  seeks  not  ambitiously 
to  peer  into  the  sky  nor  assumes  a  false  lowliness;  broad, 
beautiful,  fitted  artistically  to  the  needs  of  men  and 
women  of  modern  cultivation  and  correctness  of  conduct 
and  thought,  but  neither  the  harborer  of  the  mystic  who 
dwells  among  the  beatitudes  of  heaven,  nor  a  refuge  for 
the  lowly  and  sin-worn  wayfarer  whose  need  is  consola- 
tion in  the  rough  ways  of  the  world. 

To  turn  from  Tennyson  to  Robert  Browning  is  to  en- 
counter one  of  the  most  striking  contrasts  in  all  literature; 
and  nothing  so  argues  the  range,  the  sweep,  and  breadth 
of  the  Victorian  age  as  this  existence  in  it,  side  by  side, 
of  two  giants  in  poetry,  each  so  complete  in  his  own 
greatness,  each  so  diverse  in  spirit,  art,  and  ideals  of 
life.  Were  our  consideration  in  this  book  the  poetry  of 
Browning  at  large,  difficult  Paracelsus  should  claim  our 
attention,  impracticable  Sordello,  Strafford,  A  Blot  in  the 
'Scvtcheon,  and  the  rest  of  the  dramas  with  their  wealth 
of  thought,  their  psychological  discernment,  and  their 
effective  eloquence  so  often  ineffectively  misplaced.  But 
we  are  fortunately  here  concerned  with  that  indubitably 
greater  Browning  whose  deep  and  varied  lyricism,  like  his 
daring  idealism,  the  product  of  a  rich,  fervid,  and  amaz- 
ingly honest  nature,  places  him  irremovably  among  the 
very  greatest  of  English  poets.  And  here,  even  more  than 
in  the  case  of  Tennyson,  is  the  chronicler  of  the  lyric  at  a 


THE  VICTORIAN  LYRISTS  201 

loss  to  know  where  to  draw  the  line  of  distinction  between 
what  we  have  been  wont  to  accept  without  question  as 
lyrical  poetry  and  those  contiguous  provinces  into  which 
trespasses  the  objectiveness  of  narration  or  surges  the  pas- 
sion of  the  drama.  Of  the  former,  with  its  cool  aloofness, 
the  poetry  of  Browning  furnishes  few  examples :  that  was 
the  province  of  Tennyson.  As  to  the  dramatic  lyric. 
Browning  maj'^  be  said  almost  to  have  created  it.  He 
loves  to  take  a  dramatic  situation  and  flash  the  light  of 
intuitive  discovery  upon  the  passions  that  arise  out  of  it. 
He  delights  to  let  an  imagined  personage,  often  realized 
with  the  fewest  possible  strokes,  betray  the  life  that  he 
has  led,  the  secrets  of  his  inmost  soul,  under  stress  of  the 
revealing  moment.  This  is  sometimes  called  Browning's 
power  of  psychological  analysis;  but  it  has  often  neither 
the  leisurely  unfolding  of  argument  nor  the  remoteness 
and  suppression  of  feeling  that  should  properly  charac- 
terize a  process  so  allied  to  the  frigid  inquiries  of  science, 
"Sludge  the  Medium,"  "Prince  Ilohenstiel-Schwangau," 
or  even  "  The  Bishop  Orders  his  Tomb  at  Saint  Praxed's  " 
may  correctly  enough  l)e  classified  as  products  of  such  an 
analysis,  however  conducted  by  means  of  monologue  or 
dialogue;  but  the  instant  art  of  "Porphyria's Lover,"  "In 
a  (londola,"  or  "My  Last  Duchess"  is  essentially  lyrical 
for  its  concision,  unity  of  emotion,  and  intensity,  inasmuch 
as  such  poems  are  written  not  for  the  situation  (much  less 
for  the  presentation  of  events  in  sequence)  but  for  the  emo- 
tion or  i):ission  involved,  which  to  Browning  is  always  the 
main  tiling.  If  we  must  have  a  name  for  .something  at  once 


202  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

so  distinctive  and  recognizable,  we  might  call  such  poems 
lyrics  of  projected  emotion.  Drama  they  are  not,  for  they 
have  neither  the  potentiality  of  struggle  nor  development 
by  means  of  sequence  of  event.  The  emotion  is  transfused, 
it  is  true,  into  the  personages  involved;  but  the  insight, 
the  clarity  of  vision  that  flashes  upon  the  momentary 
situation  a  light  that  reveals  the  past  that  has  led  to  it, 
both  in  its  relation  to  its  present  environment  and  there- 
fore to  all  the  world  of  right  and  wrong,  this  is  the  poet's 
own,  as  subjective  in  its  quality  as  the  veritable  utterance 
of  his  own  heart. 

Like  Tennyson,  Browning  was  neither  subjected  to  the 
stress  of  need  that  hurries  unwilling  steps  along  unchosen 
paths,  nor  could  wayward  passion  ever  have  shaken  a 
nature  so  essentially  wholesome,  vigorous,  and  humane. 
Unlike  Tennyson,  Browning's  education  was  less  that 
regular  submission  to  the  accepted  processes  of  culture, 
hallowed  by  the  consent  of  generations,  than  the  desult- 
ory gathering  in  of  many  influences,  guided  by  innate 
taste,  curiosity,  and  a  thirst  to  know  the  mainsprings  of 
the  thoughts  and  consciences  of  his  fellow-men.  Religious 
dissent,  less  personal  than  inherited,  long  sojourn  in 
foreign  lands,  association  with  men  of  difTerent  race  and 
station  from  his  own,  leisure  to  work,  think,  and  write 
as  he  would  —  all  these  things  went  to  the  humanizing 
of  the  poet.  In  consequence  there  is  an  unconventional- 
ity  about  Browning,  an  openness  of  spirit,  an  ingenuous 
unconsciousness  of  precedent  and  of  that  correctness  of 
procedure  based  on  much  pondering  of  the  past  that 


THE  VICTORL\N  LYRISTS  203 

was  characteristic  of  the  narrower  and  more  self-centred 
genius  of  Tennyson.  The  immediate  inspiration  of  Brown- 
ing's boyhood's  muse  was  Shelley  and,  to  a  lesser  degree, 
Keats ;  but  to  neither  did  his  strong-thewed  poetic  genius 
submit  to  the  degree  that  makes  any  of  his  work  merely 
imitative.  Between  Browning  and  Shelley  there  is  the 
kinship  of  that  fervid  idealism  that  counts  neither  means 
nor  consequences  where  an  eternal  principle  is  involved. 
For  Shelley's  questionings  and  wilful  revolt  against  con- 
stituted authority  where  it  comes  into  conflict  with  ideas. 
Browning  substituted  an  optimistic  faith  in  the  essential 
goodness  and  harmony  of  God's  world  that  nothing  could 
shake  or  dismay.  Browning  began  his  career  as  a  p)oet  with 
the  publication  of  Pauline  in  1833,  admitted  to  his  later 
collected  works  only  on  sufferance.  The  often  repeated 
tale  that  the  earlier  volumes  of  Browning  were  failures, 
neglected  by  reader  and  critic  alike  where  not  hailed  by 
the  hitter  with  outrageously  adverse  criticism,  has  been 
conclusively  disproved.  Browning's  strong  personality 
attracted  attention  from  the  first,  and  he  acquired  instant- 
aneous recognition  among  the  few  that  read  and  care  for 
poetry.  Wordsworth,  Landor,  Carlyle,  and  many  lesser 
men  of  letters  at  once  acclaimed  him  and  became  his 
friends;  though,  after  his  first  volumes,  he  suffered  from 
the  rank  and  file  of  readers  and  reviewers  a  long  neglect, 
and  even  as  late  as  the  death  of  Mrs.  Browning,  in  18G1, 
her  popularity  eclipsed  that  of  her  husband.  But  no  per- 
sonality so  virile,  no  art  so  aggressively  independent  and 
self-assured  as  Browning's,  could  fail  to  call  down  the 


204  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

anathemas  of  those  who  follow  precedents  instead  of  cre- 
ating them.  And,  indeed,  there  was  much,  and  remained 
no  less,  in  the  poetic  art  of  Browning  that  was  crabbed, 
difficult,  and  hard  even  for  his  friends  to  justify.  Happily 
his  obscurity,  his  eccentricities,  later  to  become  more  and 
more  confirmed,  his  predilection  for  prosaic  casuistry  and 
attention  in  verse  to  themes  in  their  natures  incapable  of 
yielding  to  the  spirit  and  the  embellishments  of  poetry, 
none  of  these  things  concern  us  in  the  consideration  of 
that  choicer  element,  almost  always  present,  at  times 
almost  unexpectedly,  in  his  lyrical  poetry. 

Of  lyrics  in  the  strictest  acceptation  of  the  term,  the 
song  of  love,  of  war,  of  nature.  Browning  has  written  his 
share,  many  of  them  among  the  most  beautiful  poems  in 
the  language.  Where,  indeed,  shall  we  find  surpassed  the 
verbal  richness  of  the  song  from  Paracelsus  beginning, 

Heap  cassia,  sandal-buds  and  stripes 
Of  labdanum,  and  aloe-balls, 

the  gallop  and  clatter  of  the  "  Cavalier  Tunes,"  the  thought- 
ful beauty  of  "  Evelyn  Hope,"  or  the  rapture  of  the  lines, 

Nay  but  you,  who  do  not  love  her. 

Is  she  not  pure  gold,  my  mistress? 
Holds  earth  aught  —  speak  truth  —  above  her? 


Above  this  tress,  and  this,  I  touch 
But  cannot  praise,  I  love  so  much! 

More  frequently  Browning  places  his  lyrics  in  the  setting 
of  a  dramatic  situation;  as,  for  example,  the  passionate 
song  on  the  moth's  kiss  and  the  bee's  of  "  In  a  Gondola," 


THE  VICTORIAN  LYRISTS  205 

or  the  incomparable  songs  of  Pippa  Passes.  From  the 
last,  take  the  following  as  peculiarly  illustrative  of  the 
revealing  flash  on  a  momentary  situation,  alluded  to 

above : 

Give  her  but  a  least  excuse  to  love  me! 
When  —  where  — 

How  —  can  this  arm  establish  her  above  me. 
If  fortune  fixed  her  as  my  lady  there. 
There  already,  to  eternally  reprove  me? 

("Hist!"  —  said  Kate  the  Queen; 

But  "Oh!"  cried  the  maiden,  binding  her  tresses, 

"  'T  is  only  a  page  that  carols  unseen, 

Crumbling  your  bounds  their  messes!") 

Is  she  wronged?  —  To  the  rescue  of  her  honor. 

My  heart! 

Is  she  poor?  —  What  costs  it  to  be  styled  a  donor? 

Merely  an  earth  to  cleave,  a  sea  to  part. 

But  that  fortune  should  have  thrust  all  this  upon  her! 

("  Nay,  list!"  —  bade  Kate  the  Queen; 

And  still  cried  the  maiden,  binding  her  tresses, 

"  'T  is  only  a  page  that  carols  unseen. 

Fitting  your  hawks  their  josses!") 

If  we  enlarge  our  conception  of  t  lie  lyric  as  suggested  in  the 
paragrai)h  before  the  last,  in  number  as  in  quality  —  the 
quality  of  an  intense  and  sincere  individuality  —  Brown- 
ing is  at  once  one  of  the  most  productive  and  in  many 
respects  the  choicest  lyrist  of  the  Victorian  age.  His  range 
is  a  dozen  times  that  of  tlu*  laureate,  and  his  music,  while 
less  technically  faultless,  is  far  more  varied  and  of  a 
deeper,  richer  tone.  In  Browning's  poetry,  distinction 
of  style  and  haj)pincss  of  phrase —  both  of  which  at  need 
are  present  —  arc  swept  away  in  a  sincerity  of  passionate 


206  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

utterance  that  makes  the  mere  consideration  of  such 
things  a  prating  about  idle  baubles.  Where  other  poets 
leave  us  coolly  critical  of  their  skill  or  warmed  at  most 
with  approbation.  Browning  carries  us  away  and  leaves 
us  glowing  with  the  emotion  that  he  inspires.  This  can 
be  said  of  few  lyrical  poets  in  our  critical  age,  atrophied 
as  we  are  in  feeling,  intellectually  satisfied  wholly  with 
naught. 

The  history  of  literature  knows  no  parallel  to  the  beau- 
tiful marriage  of  Robert  Browning  and  Elizabeth  Barrett. 
Sofa-ridden  she  had  been  almost  from  childhood,  a  recluse 
save  for  the  small  circle  about  her,  when  her  strong,  hope- 
ful lover  burst  like  the  sunlight  into  her  darkened  room 
and  carried  her  away  into  life  and  happiness.  Elizabeth 
Barrett  was  remarkably  precocious,  publishing,  in  1820 
(when  no  more  than  a  child),  an  epic  in  three  books  on  the 
battle  of  Marathon  and  An  Essay  on  Mind  not  much 
later.  In  both  the  Popean  couplet  rules  supreme,  a  verse 
with  its  great  author  then  recently  championed  by  Byron 
against  the  attacks  of  Bowles;  and  Byron  himself,  ill  fol- 
lowed, was  among  Miss  Barrett's  models  in  her  earliest 
lyrical  verse.  With  the  translation  of  Prometheus  Bound, 
published  with  other  poems  in  1833,  and  the  steady  stream 
of  four  successive  volumes  between  1835  and  1844,  the 
fame  of  Miss  Barrett  as  the  first  of  English  poetesses  be- 
came firmly  established.  In  fact,  by  1846,  when  she  be- 
came Mrs.  Browning,  the  recognition  accorded  her  was 
far  more  certain  than  that  of  her  husband ;  and  she  died  in 
1861  with  a  repute  which  Browning  himself  had  by  no 


THE  VICTORL\N  LYRISTS  207 

means  as  yet  attained.  Mrs.  Browning's  was  a  life  full  of 
noble  aspiration;  poetry  was  to  her  no  mere  art,  the  in- 
valid's diversion,  but  a  weapon  wherewith  to  fight  for  the 
liberty  of  her  beloved  Italy  and  for  the  betterment  of  the 
downtrodden  about  her.  These  things  have  stamped 
many  of  her  longer  poems  with  the  ephemeral  character- 
istics that  belong  to  all  applied  art.  With  a  power  of  feel- 
ing often  as  exquisite  as  it  is  always  sincere,  Mrs.  Brown- 
ing combined  a  facility  of  expression  that  betrayed  her  at 
times  into  diffusencss  and  a  profusion  of  detail.  Un- 
fortunately this,  with  the  inequality  of  her  mastery  over 
rhythm  and  rime,  is  precisely  the  thing  which  is  most  cer- 
tain to  defeat  lyrical  success.  We  find  poem  after  poem 
beginning  well,  but  sustained  too  long  or  in  a  tone  that 
substitutes  thought  about  emotion  for  the  emotion  itself. 
Where  natural  feeling  is  concerned,  as  in  the  touching 
"Child's  Grave  at  Florence,"  Mrs.  Browning  is  seldom  at 
fault;  but  she  was  emulous  of  more  ambitious  things,  and 
her  ambitions  and  her  social  sympathies,  as  in  Aurora 
Leigh,  carried  her  beyond  the  wide  borders  of  poetry, 
however  poetical  and  memorable  this  story  in  verse  re- 
mains in  parts.  Mrs.  Browning's  religious  feeling,  which 
is  strong  if  conventional,  produced  some  excellent  hymns; 
a  romantic  sj)irit,  less  pronounecd  however,  rules  in  such 
fine  jjoems  as  "Bertha  in  the  Lane"  and  "Lady  (jcrald- 
ine's  Courtship,"  or  the  spirited  "Rhyme  of  the  Duchess 
May"  (tliough  no  one  of  them  is  strictly  lyrical),  while 
the  genuine  pathos  of  "Cowj)er's  Crave"  must  always 
find  an  honorable  place  among  shorter  English  elegies. 


208  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

In  contrast  with  her  great  husband,  Mrs.  Browning  dis- 
plays a  sure  touch  in  the  sonnet,  although  she  manages 
its  effects  of  varied  music  in  a  manner  that  falls  short  of 
the  greatest  sonneteers.  It  was  Browning's  love  that 
inspired  in  her  the  finest  outburst  of  lyricism,  the  fervid, 
passionate  Sonnets  from  the  Portuguese,  which  remain 
unparalleled  in  English  poetry  as  the  only  extended  as 
well  as  the  choicest  expression  of  a  woman's  love.  It  is  of 
interest  to  remember  that  these  burning  poems,  with  their 
abandon  to  the  exaltation  of  love  as  to  the  lover's  over- 
whelming sense  of  her  o^\ti  unworthiness,  were  written 
during  the  days  of  courtship,  but  not  shown  to  their  sub- 
ject. Browning,  until  after  the  lovers'  marriage,  nor  pub- 
lished until  years  later.  Take  the  sonnet,  "How  do  I  love 
thee  ?"  or  "If  thou  must  love  me,  let  it  be  for  nought," 
and  we  must  go  back  to  Sappho  of  Mytilene  for  the  con- 
fession by  a  woman  of  a  woman's  love  of  equal  fervor  and 
poetic  beauty.  Mrs.  Browning's  love  made  her  otherwise 
lyrically  vocal,  as  a  dozen  beautiful  poems,  "Life  and 
Love,"  "Change  upon  Change,"  "A  Denial,"  and  other 
lyrics  show.  But  in  Sonnets  from  the  Portuguese  she 
reached  in  the  passion  which  they  chronicle  alike  the 
height  of  fervid  poetical  spirit  and  the  fulfilment  of  her 
delicate  womanhood. 

We  have  already  noted  other  poets  of  her  sex,  Mrs. 
Browning's  earlier  contemporaries.  Fanny  Kemble,  the 
accomplished  actress  and  a  most  precocious  dramatist, 
wrote  much  verse,  some  lyrical,  the  latest  volume  dating 
1883.    The  two  grand-daughters  of  Richard  Brinsley 


THE  VICTORIAN  L\TIISTS  209 

Sheridan,  afterwards  respectively  Lady  DuflFerin  and 
Caroline  Norton  (Meredith's  Diana)  also  left  each  a  lyric 
or  two  that  claim  a  place  in  our  anthologies.  While  that 
rare  spirit,  Emily  Bronte,  author  of  Wuthering  Heights,  in 
Poems  by  Currer,  Ellis  and  Acton  Bell,  1846,  reaches  in- 
spiration in  more  than  one  of  her  contributions,  espe- 
cially in  the  noble,  dauntless  poem  entitled  "Last  Lines." 

No  coward  soul  is  mine. 
No  trembler  in  the  world's  storm- troubled  sphere: 

I  see  Heaven's  glories  shine. 
And  faith  shines  equal,  arming  me  from  fear. 


Though  earth  and  man  were  gone. 
And  suns  and  universes  ceased  to  be. 

And  thou  were  left  alone. 
Every  existence  would  exist  in  thee. 

There  is  not  room  for  Death, 
Nor  atom  that  his  might  could  render  void: 

Thou  —  Thou  art  Being  and  Breath, 
And  what  thou  art  may  never  be  destroyed. 

None  of  the  younger  contemporaries  of  their  own  sex  (if 
we  except  ('hristina  Ilossetli,  of  whom  more  below), 
approximated  any  .such  poetical  heights  as  those  of  Mrs. 
Browning.  George  Eliot  wrote  no  small  amount  of  verse; 
it  deserves  attention  mainly  l)ecause  .she  was  a  great 
novelist.  Dinah  Maria  Craik  is  memorable  for  one  charm- 
ing domestic  poem,  "Philip,  my  king";  Adelaide  Anne 
Procter,  daughter  of  Barry  Cornwall,  for  another,  "The 
Lost  Chord."  It  was  the  latter  who  shared  with  Jean 
Ingelow  the  highest  popularity  of  any  i)orl  of  her  sex  in 


210  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

the  late  forties  and  j&fties,  and  the  popularity  of  both  was 
based  largely  on  their  pleasing  lyrics.  Jean  Ingelow  is  the 
better  poet.  Both  gain  by  judicious  sifting  out  of  the 
temporary,  the  sentimental,  and  the  insignificant.  To  pass 
many  lesser  names,  a  poet  of  finer  quality  and  greater 
power  than  these,  and  even  now  too  little  known,  was 
Augusta  Webster,  whose  several  volumes  appeared  be- 
tween 1860  and  1887,  seven  years  prior  to  her  death.  A 
dramatic  rather  than  a  lyrical  quality  is  characteristic  of 
Mrs.  Webster's  work,  and  this  outside  of  her  poems  in 
accepted  dramatic  form,  such  as  Portraits.  None  the  less  a 
strong  lyrical  spirit  pervades  A  Woman  Sold  and  Other 
Poems,  1865,  and  later  volumes ;  witness  the  three  stanzas 
entitled  "  Not  to  be,"  and  such  little  pieces  as  the  "  English 
Stornelli "  which  combine  the  brevity,  the  feeling,  and  the 
unity  of  the  best  lyrical  art. 

The  attraction  of  several  names  to  our  word  of  Mrs. 
Browning  and  the  extended  careers  of  Tennyson  and 
Browning,  reaching  from  the  thirties  to  the  close  of  the 
eighties  and  a  little  beyond,  have  carried  us  well  forward 
of  much  in  poetry  that  belongs  to  the  earlier  Victorian 
years;  but  even  the  earliest  were  full  of  minor  song,  and 
the  anthologies  preserve  for  us,  among  many  others,  the 
names  of  John  Sterling,  immortalized  biographically  by 
Carlyle;  of  Richard  Chenevix  Trench,  last  Anglican  arch- 
bishop in  Dublin  and  a  Wordsworthian,  chaste  in  diction, 
unaffected  in  piety;  the  accomplished  and  many-sided 
Lord  Houghton ;  and  the  distinguished  physician,  devoted 
friend  of  Rossetti,  Thomas  Gordon  Hake.   In  Scotland, 


THE  VICTORLVN  LYRISTS  211 

too.  Professor  Blackie  began  writing  in  these  years,  a 
lyrist,  light,  fluent,  and  patriotic;  and  there  was  likewise 
the  graver  and  more  philosophical  genius  of  William  Bell 
Scott,  a  painter,  as  a  poet,  of  note,  Alfred  Domett, 
Browning's  "Waring,"  took  a  precocious  poetical  reputa- 
tion away  with  him  to  New  Zealand;  and  Sir  Samuel 
Ferguson,  author  of  the  epic  poem,  Congal,  raised  among 
his  admiring  fellow-countrymen  the  question  whether  he 
was  Ireland's  long  sought  "national  bard,"  or  only  an 
honorable  equal  of  Mangan,  who  is  at  least  Ij^rically  far 
his  superior,  or  the  younger  Aubrey  de  Vere  who,  begin- 
ning a  Wordsworthian  as  far  back  as  1842  and  "wavering 
between  English,  Irish,  and  Catholic  tradition,"  as  Mr. 
Yeats  puts  it,  essayed  poetry  in  many  forms  and  suc- 
ceeded in  several.'  There  is  often  a  fine  heroic  note  in  the 
poetry  of  Ferguson,  and  he  has  caught  the  mystical  fatal- 
ism of  his  nation's  belief  in  fairy-lore,  if  not  quite  its  sus- 
taining music,  in  "The  F'airy  Well  of  Lagnanay"  for 
example.  In  the  symbolism  of  such  a  poem  as  "The  Little 
Black  Rose,"  dc  Vere  justifies  his  nationality,  as  in  the 
song,  "She  says:  'Poor  friend,  you  waslo  a  Ireasure'" 
and  other  true  lyrics,  he  (-iaiins  a  place  in  the  larger  realm 
of  English  song.  In  estimating  his  country's  poets,  Mr. 
Yeats  has  placed  ALingan  above  Ferguson  and  Ferguson 
above  Thomas  Davis,  finding  in  the  last,  as  a  ref)resenta- 
tive  of  the  poetry  of  "Young  Ireland,"  an  interfer(>nce  of 
palriolisrn  and  enthusiasm  wilh   liicir  arl   as  jxtels,  yet 

'  S<-<;  "  Mixjcrn  Iri.sli  l'<H't,ry"  and  "  I'octry  aii<l  'VnuWi'iDU."  Cnllrrlrd 
Work/i  of  tt'.  R.  Yrntu,  1908,  vni. 


212  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

granting  Davis  "  much  tenderness  "  in  the  simple  lyric  of 
love.  Possibly  it  is  in  no  one  of  these  but  in  William 
Allingham  that  we  are  to  seek  the  beginnings  of  the  Irish 
Celtic  revival  that  forms  so  interesting  and  well-heralded 
a  "  movement "  of  our  own  literary  present.  Allingham  had 
an  inborn  lyrical  gift,  and  even  if,  as  Mr.  Yeats  says,  "he 
sang  Ballyshannon  [his  native  village]  and  not  Ireland," 
his  very  idyllic  narrowness  made  him  the  truer  representa- 
tive of  the  national  spirit  in  certain  of  its  aspects.  Like 
Herrick,  in  a  very  difiFerent  manner,  Allingham  is  a  poet 
of  little  things  and  of  the  inspiration  of  little  things.  Mr. 
Yeats  quotes  from  him  these  simple  lines  as  an  example  of 
"one  of  the  rare  moments  of  quaint  inspiration  that  came 
to  him  in  recent  years  " : 

Four  ducks  on  a  pond, 
A  grass-bank  beyond, 
A  blue  sky  of  spring. 
White  clouds  on  the  wing; 

What  a  little  thing 

To  remember  for  years  — 

To  remember  with  tears! 

If  Allingham  sang  of  little  things,  Coventry  Patmore 
was  certain,  with  what  his  friends  might  have  called  the 
divine  vanity  of  genius,  that  he  sang  of  the  greatest  of  all 
things,  the  love  of  man  for  woman,  and  that  in  a  guise  not 
hitherto  attempted.  Patmore  is  the  laureate  of  wedded 
love,  which  he  celebrated  in  The  Angel  in  the  Houses  1852- 
1863,  with  a  devotion,  a  facility,  and  a  completeness  — 
even  though  his  first  stupendous  plan  remained  unfulfilled 


THE  VICTORIAN  LYRISTS  213 

—  unequalled  in  the  history  of  poetry.  Patmore  had  begun 
imitatively,  first  under  the  influence  of  Mrs.  Browning, 
secondly  under  that  of  Tennyson,  as  early  as  1844;  and  in 
later  years  he  achieved  greater  poetry,  if  a  less  repute,  in  a 
couple  of  volumes,  Odes  and  The  Unknown  Eros,  in  which 
love  is  still  his  universal  theme,  though  now  transmuted 
into  a  symbolical,  not  to  say  an  apocalyptical,  reference 
to  the  deepest  mysteries  of  religion.  It  has  been  claimed 
for  Patmore  that  he  created  a  new  species  of  erotic  poetry; 
and  the  purity,  the  sincerity,  and  the  independence  of  his 
lyrical  psychology  is  not  for  a  moment  to  be  questioned. 
Patmore,  although  a  friend  of  the  young  pre-Raphaelites 
and  a  contributor  to  'J'fie  Germ,  is  assuredly  "a  solitary 
specimen  of  an  unrelated  species,"  a  man  temperamentally 
lyrical,  who  strove  assiduously  to  write  poetry  didactic, 
gnomic,  and  philosophical.*  When  Tennyson  and  the 
pre-Raphaelites  were  teaching  the  world  a  new,  elaborate, 
and  intricate  i)rosody,  Patmore  adhered  with  undeviating 
devotion  to  a  stanza  derived  from  old  baihidry  which, 
despite  much  intervening  study  and  discussion  by  him 
of  verse  and  metrical  effect,  was  varied  in  his  later  poetry 
only  by  u  facile  and  musical  adaptation  of  the  irregular 
structure  of  the  Odes  of  Cowley,  wherein  the  phrase  is  the 
line  and  the  variation  is  dependent  on  the  thouglit  and  on 
no  preconceived  stanzaic  arrangement.  Notwithstanding 
this  and  des[)ite  his  tenuity,  his  insistence  on  the  trivial 
and  his  banality  even  at  times,  Patmore  is  a  poet  to  Ik« 

'  .S«T  Uic  inUrcsting  life  l)y  K.  Gossc  in  lAlrraTii  I.ivrn,  1 !)(),'»,  where 
this  thesis  is  successfully  set  fdrlh. 


214  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

reckoned  with.  It  may  not  have  been  the  best  that  was  in 
him  that  sold  a  quarter  of  a  milHon  copies  of  The  Angel 
in  the  House  ;  and  the  subsequent  neglect  of  him  by  the 
public  and  even  by  those  who  had  been  his  friends  may 
be  referable  to  other  causes  than  the  estrangement  due  to 
his  reception  into  the  communion  of  Rome;  still  there 
remains  an  independent,  passionate,  and  tender  lyrical 
spirit  in  him  which,  combined  with  a  metrical  facility, 
unparalleled  save  perhaps  in  George  Wither,  will  re- 
tain for  the  Patmore  of  "The  Azaleas,"  "The  Toys," 
or  "Amelia"  —  to  mention  only  these  —  a  singular  and 
honorable  place  in  Victorian  lyrical  song. 

And  now,  as  in  the  brave  Elizabethan  days,  the  gift  of 
song  spread  more  and  more  abroad,  though  often  the 
lyric  remained  the  occasional  by-product  of  a  poet  de- 
voted to  other  forms  of  verse;  as,  for  example,  in  the  case 
of  Thomas  Edward  Brown,  the  Manx  laureate,  an  excel- 
lent poet,  Sir  Edwin  Arnold,  author  of  the  epic  The  Light 
of  Asia,  Lord  Lytton,  imitative,  eclectic,  and  second  class, 
or  Lewis  Morris,  the  Welshman,  who  was  equally  popu- 
lar with  these  two  latter  as  he  was  equally  narrative  and 
second  rate.  Among  less  popular  poets  who  began  to 
write  far  earlier  than  any  of  these  was  William  Cox 
Bennet,  the  author  of  some  charming  domestic  songs,  and 
Francis  Turner  Palgrave,  less  memorable  for  his  own 
scholarly  verses  than  for  his  selection,  with  the  powerful 
aid  of  Tennyson,  of  the  poetry  constituting  the  famous 
anthology,  The  Golden  Treasury  of  English  Songs  and 
Lyrics.   Men  great  in  other  walks  of  literature  left  lyrics 


THE  VICTORIAN  LYRISTS  215 

behind  them.  Ruskin's  verses,  descriptive  and  Byronic, 
were  written  in  his  youth  and  are  not  distinguished;  Car- 
lyle's  are  terse,  pregnant  in  thought,  unmusical,  not  quite 
poetical.  Thackeray  was  a  generous  and  happy  con- 
tributor to  vers  de  societe  and  humorous  verse;  there  are 
jingles  in  Dickens;  Kingsley's  poetry  is  built  upon  the 
universal  emotions,  ringing  true  and  tuneful.  There  were 
the  possibilities  of  a  great  poet  in  Charles  Kingsley,  and 
it  is  amazing  that  he  should  have  retained  his  singing 
voice  in  lyrics  such  as  "Oh  that  we  two  were  maying," 
"The  Sands  of  Dee,"  and  "The  Three  Fishers,"  in  a  life 
of  such  incessant  activities  remote  from  poetry.  Varied 
was  the  mid-Victorian  lyrical  chorus,  now  voicing  the 
national  spirit  of  the  moment  (the  Crimean  War)  in  the 
war  of  poetry  of  unequal,  "spasmodic"  Dobell  and  sound 
and  English-hearted  Gerald  Massey,  both  of  them  of 
copious  lyrical  and  non-lyrical  industry  on  other  topics; 
now  aj)i)licd  to  political  propaganda  as  in  the  Scmgs  of 
Democracy  of  Ernest  Charles  Jones,  or  the  satirical  Songs 
of  the  Governing  Classes  by  Robert  Brough ;  now  turned 
with  William  lirighty  Rands,  who  modestly  lost  himself 
in  three  or  four  pseudonyms,  to  wise  and  dainty  nonsense 
verses  to  stand  beside  those  of  Carroll,  Gilbert,  and  Steven- 
son, a  joy  to  children  and  their  elders.  There  is  a  patho.s 
in  such  a  poem  as  "Louise  on  tlie  Door-Slej),"  by  the 
poj)ular  journalist  ('liarlcs  IVLickay,  that  is  worthy  of 
Hood;  there  is  rhap.sodic  wcirdness  in  "When  the  world  is 
biirriiii^.',"  by  Ebcncz-cr  Jones,  defeated  in  I  he  struggle  for 
health,  life,  and  art;  as  there  is  a  natural  ery,  among  all 


216  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

the  churclily  leadings  and  agnostic  throes  of  the  times, 
in  these  lines  of  the  classical  master  of  Eton,  William 

Cory: 

You  promise  heavens  free  from  strife, 
Pure  truth,  and  perfect  change  of  will; 

But  sweet,  sweet  is  this  human  life. 
So  sweet,  I  fain  would  breathe  it  still; 

Your  chilly  stars  I  can  forego. 

This  warm  kind  world  is  all  I  know. 

You  say  there  is  no  substance  here. 

One  great  reality  above: 
Back  from  that  void  I  shrink  in  fear. 

And  childlike  hide  myself  in  love: 
Show  me  what  angels  feel.  Till  then, 
I  cling,  a  mere  weak  man,  to  men. 

An  independent  spirit  moves  in  the  interesting  poetry  of 
Robert  Leigh  ton,  a  busy  man  of  affairs;  and  in  the  devo- 
tional, as  in  the  secular  lyrics  of  the  novelist,  George 
Macdonald,  there  rules  a  sweet  wholcsomeness  and  moral 
earnestness  not  unrelieved  by  delicate  fancy.  William 
James  Linton,  notable  during  a  long  life  for  his  agitation 
of  radical  and  republican  ideas,  for  his  skill  as  an  engraver 
on  wood,  and  a  bibliophile  and  printer  of  rare  books,  went 
back  to  the  spirit  of  Catullus,  Campion,  and  Herrick  in 
his  charmingly  finished  lyrics  of  "Love-lore";  Walter 
Thornbury  revived  the  life  of  later  old  days  in  his  Songs 
of  the  Cavaliers  and  Roundheads,  1857;  and  Joseph  Skipsey 
showed  an  unexpected  kinship  with  the  genius  of  Blake 
in  his  "power  of  making  simple  things  seem  strange  and 
strange  things  simple."  Even  the  politer  poets  of  vers  de 


THE  VICTORL\N  LYRISTS  217 

societe  do  not  often  better  the  condensation  and  point 
attained  at  times  by  Skipsey,  who  literally  came  up  out 
of  the  coal-pits.  As  to  these  politer  poets,  Frederick 
Locker-Lampson,  with  a  host  of  others,  Mortimer  Collins, 
Charles  Stuart  Calverley  and  H.  S.  Leigh  (with  the  admir- 
able satirical  and  nonsense  verse  of  Lewis  Carroll  and 
William  S.  Gilbert),  carried  forward  the  genre  and  its 
like  from  Praed  and  Lord  Houghton  to  Dobson  and 
Stephen. 

Though  neither  Tennyson  nor  Browning  can  be  de- 
scribed in  any  narrow  sense  as  devotional,  far  less  as  theo- 
logical poets,  a  religious  tone  was  strong  from  the  first  in 
the  poetry  of  both;  it  waxed  stronger  and  more  clearly 
defined  when  the  times  came  to  be  rent  with  the  religious 
excitement  of  the  thirties  and  forties.  The  Oxford  or 
Tractarian  Movement,  as  it  is  usually  designated,  con- 
cerns us  in  this  book  only  in  so  far  as  it  is  responsible  for 
the  song  that  it  inspired  in  its  immediate  effects  and  in 
its  reaction.  This  movement  in  the  Church  of  England 
appears  to  have  arisen  as  a  protest  against  the  utilitarian- 
ism, the  rationalism  and  spirit  of  inquiry  which  had  begun 
to  manifest  itself  toward  the  beginning  of  the  second 
quarter  of  the  century,  and,  twenty  years  later,  was  hurry- 
ing even  the  church  into  new  ;iii(l  troubled  waters.  The 
Oxford  Movement,  we  are  informed,  was  "the  direct 
result  of  the  searchings  of  heart  and  the  communings  for 
seven  years,  from  182(5  to  1833,  of  Kel)le,  Ilurrell  Froude, 
and  Newman.  .  .  .  Keble  had  given  the  inspiration, 
Froude  had  given  the  impetus,  then  Newman  took  up 


218  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

the  work";  and  this  work  consisted  in  the  attempted 
revival  of  a  questionless  faith,  an  observation  of  form 
and  ceremonial,  and  the  cultivation  of  a  religious  fervor 
of  heart  which  can  only  be  described  as  mediaeval.^  The 
first  of  the  famous  Tracts  jor  the  Times,  the  work  of  New- 
man and  other  men,  appeared  in  September,  1833,  and  the 
movement  was  continued  by  this  means,  and  especially 
by  Newman's  eloquent  and  persuasive  sermons.  New- 
man's arguments  had  been  for  the  via  media;  but  the 
"middle  way"  turned  more  and  more  towards  the  high- 
way of  Rome;  and  when  at  last  he  maintained  in  the 
notorious  "Tract  XC,"  in  1841,  that  the  thirty-nine 
articles  —  that  corner  stone  of  the  English  Church  — 
"  were  not  opposed  to  Catholic  teaching  and  only  partially 
to  Roman  dogma,  that  the  real  opposition  is  merely  to 
the  dominant  errors  of  Rome,"  the  crisis  was  reached  and 
his  leadership  was  at  an  end.  The  Oxford  Movement 
was  dead,  in  1845,  with  Newman's  admission  into  the 
communion  of  Rome;  but  its  consequences  on  English 
thought  and  English  literature  long  continued.  This  is 
not  the  place  in  which  to  pursue  a  subject  which  belongs 
to  a  sphere  much  wider.  Neither  the  pellucid  prose  of  the 
author  of  the  Apologia  nor  the  unconscious  sophistry  of 
his  dialectic  and  ingenious  mind  (call  them  "the  severity 
of  his  logic,"  if  that  is  preferred)  is  here  our  concern. 
Nor  is  it  our  business  to  question  the  sincerity  of  a  man 
who  paid  much  for  the  courage  of  his  religious  convictions, 
whatever  were  his  rewards.  The  poetry  of  Keble,  the 
*  See  Hugh  Walker  in  his  Victorian  Literature,  1910,  pp.  Ill  ff. 


THE  VICTORL\N  LYRISTS  219 

better  part  of  which  was  prior  to  the  "movement,"  has 
already  found  mention  in  its  place.  Its  simple  churchli- 
ness  and  faint  Wordsworthianism  are  little  touched  by- 
religious  or  other  turmoil  or  debate.  Its  uniform  level  of 
modest  literary  excellence  explains  its  enormous  popu- 
larity with  the  godly  and  the  unpoetic.  The  present  writer 
feels  otherwise  concerning  the  slender  volume  of  Cardinal 
Newman's  verse.  For  while  little  of  it  is  poetry  in  any 
exalted  or  imaginative  sense,  there  is  in  it  the  same  fine 
feeling  for  the  phrase,  for  thought  buoyed  up  by  language 
at  once  choice  and  fitting,  that  we  find  in  Newman's  in- 
comparable prose.  Newman's  poetry  has  none  of  the 
religious  conventionality  of  Keble's.  His  is  the  freer, 
nobler  utterance  of  a  heart  equally  sincere  and  of  a  writer 
immeasurably  Keble's  superior.  "Lead,  kindly  Light," 
written  as  far  back  as  1833,  and  called  by  the  author  "The 
Pillar  of  the  Cloud,"  is  only  the  best  among  many  beauti- 
ful devotional  poems.  "Ilora  Novissiraa,"  to  name  only 
one  other  lyric,  should  be  contrasted  with  Matthew  Ar- 
nold's poem,  "A  Wish,"  if  we  would  know  in  its  extremes 
how  the  Oxford  Movement  divided  the  hearts  and  hopes 
of  men.  If  there  is  a  fine  nobility  in  the  hard-eyed  sto- 
icism of  agnostic  courage,  there  is  assuredly  as  touching 
a  beauty  in  the  devout  submission  of  unfiuestioniug 
faith  to  death  assuaged  by  the  consolations  of  Christian 
ministration. 

Save  for  Newman  and  Kcble,  the  Oxford  Movement 
insjjircfl  no  other  i)oet  of  note.  Strange  that  reactionary 
faith  should  have  been  so  silent  with  rationalistic  doubt 


220  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

soon  to  become  so  vocal:  and  this  the  more  when  we 
recognize  that  the  heart  of  the  reaction  was,  after  all, 
resthetic  and  a  protest  against  the  inroads  of  rationalism 
on  hallowed  if  conventional  ideals  of  life.  The  ninety 
Tracts  for  the  Times  offered  a  petty  stop-gap  to  the  on- 
rushing  tide  of  liberal  thought.  Essentially  conservative 
and  conventional  Tennyson  was  wrought  to  the  devising 
of  a  species  of  poetical  via  media  wherein  the  theory  of 
evolution  and  English  orthodoxy  were  yoked  uncomfort- 
ably to  step  the  way  of  progress  together.  Browning,  who 
is  as  conspicuous  for  his  anti-ecclesiastical  attitude  as  he 
is  for  his  optimistic  faith  in  God,  set  forth  the  strongest 
plea  of  modern  times  for  a  rationalized  view  of  life,  con- 
duct, and  human  obligations,  for  the  exercise  of  individual 
freedom  and  obedience  to  the  divine  promptings  of  rebel- 
lion where  rebellion  must  inevitably  arise  against  outworn 
conventions.  But  it  was  younger  men  who  felt  to  the  full 
the  immediate  reaction  against  the  defeated  "attempt  to 
revive  in  the  church  of  England  the  claims  of  primitive 
Christianity  and  bind  her  to  traditions."  Arthur  Hugh 
Clough  and  Matthew  Arnold  have  been  variously  called 
the  poets  of  rationalism,  of  agnosticism,  or  of  doubt.  The 
latter  are  better  terms  than  the  jfirst;  for  neither  poet 
shared  in  the  Berserker  rage  of  Carlyle,  that  mighty 
breaker  of  images,  but  mourned  over  the  fragments  of 
the  fallen  idols,  hesitant  and  nonplussed  as  to  whether, 
after  all,  it  were  not  better  they  had  remained  in  their 
hallowed  niches.  It  is  this  that  makes  the  two  poets  of 
doubt  so  thoroughly  representative  of  a  salient  charac- 


THE  VICTORIAN  LYRISTS  221 

teristic  of  the  century  just  completed.  For  if  we  look  over 
that  century  at  large,  we  find  its  spirit  marked  by  several 
momentous  changes.  The  contented  acquiescence  in 
things  as  they  are,  pervaded  by  a  strong  moral  sense  and 
love  of  man  in  society  which  characterized  the  eighteenth 
century,  was  disturbed  by  the  awakening  of  the  feeling 
for  nature,  by  rebellion  against  convention,  by  romantic 
spirit,  enthusiasm,  in  weaker  natures  sentimentalism  and 
despair.  This  was  followed  by  the  hush  that  preceded  the 
coming  of  Tennyson  and  Browning,  during  which  Car- 
lyle  carried  forward  the  earlier  enthusiasm,  now  turned 
sceptical  and  iconoclastic,  into  the  broader  transcendent- 
alism represented  by  Emerson  in  philosophy,  George 
Eliot  in  fiction,  and  Ruskin  in  art.  Meanwhile  the  ration- 
alistic note  was  sounding  ever  more  and  more  insistently, 
the  effect  of  the  spirit  of  scientific  inquiry  that  produced 
such  men  as  Darwin,  Huxley,  Mill,  and  Tyndall;  and 
this  in  turn  l)r()ught  about  the  reactionary  Oxford  Move- 
ment of  which  we  have  just  heard;  and  in  tlie  war  of  con- 
tending tendencies  wrought  such  men  as  Newman,  Kings- 
ley,  Dr.  Thomas  Arnold,  Maurice,  and  in  a  still  younger 
generation,  Clough  and  Matthew  Arnold.  If  the  spirit 
of  our  own  late  time,  the  age  of  Victoria,  be  studied  for 
the  larger  inherent  qualities  that  made  it  what  it  was,  we 
must  recognize  inevitably  among  them  its  intellectuality, 
its  separation  of  the  man  from  his  opinions,  its  doubt, 
and  its  faith.  This  new  faith  is  one  that  is  larger  th;m  that 
of  creeds  and  dogmas;  it  is  faith  in  the  salvation  that  is  to 
come  to  mankind  m  unswerving  fidelity  to  truth.    Vic- 


222  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

torian  doubt,  too,  was  not  so  much  unbelief  as  half -belief , 
question,  pause,  lest  we  be  led  blindly  on  and  trust  to 
guidance  where  there  is  none.  Least  of  all  is  the  doubt 
of  men  like  Clough  and  Arnold  to  be  interpreted  into  that 
cheap  scepticism  that  wraps  itself  in  the  cloak  of  its  own 
cleverness  and  questions  both  motive  and  evidence  be- 
cause it  knows  that  all  is  not  true  within.  Keble  used  to 
say  of  Dr.  Thomas  Arnold,  the  poet's  father,  that  it  was 
"  better  to  have  Arnold's  doubts  than  another  man's  cer- 
tainties ";  and  Tennyson's  well-known  lines  about  more 
faith  in  honest  doubt  than  in  half  the  creeds  echoes  the 
same  thought. 

Arthur  Hugh  Clough  was  born  in  1819,  three  years 
before  Arnold.  Both  were  educated  at  Rugby  under  the 
powerful  personality  of  Dr.  Thomas  Arnold,  who  has  been 
described  as  the  exponent  of  liberalism,  moral  and  intel- 
lectual, a  man  who  left  a  deeper  impression  on  his  time 
through  his  pupils  than  almost  any  teacher.  Dr.  Arnold 
was  always  a  force  counter  to  the  Oxford  Movement;  and 
his  appointment,  in  1842,  to  the  Regius  professorship  of 
history  at  Oxford  marked  the  definite  defeat  of  the  reac- 
tionaries. Thus  in  their  studentship  the  two  young  poets 
were  caught  in  the  vortex,  so  to  speak,  of  these  conflicting 
waves  of  opinion.  It  was  more  than  the  liberality  of  Dr. 
Arnold  (or  the  looseness  of  his  opinions  to  him  who  will 
have  it  so)  that  unsettled  such  minds.  It  required  like- 
wise the  recoil  that  came  with  the  contemplation  of  what 
must  have  seemed  most  vividly  to  such  men  a  return  to 
the  empty  formalism  of  a  justly  forgotten  past.   This  it 


THE  \1CT0RL\N  LYRISTS  223 

was  that  made  these  two  poets  so  supereminently  repre- 
sentative of  this  central  struggle  of  the  age.  If  Arnold 
represents  the  intellectual  side  of  these  times  of  doubt 
and  debate,  Clough  represents  their  emotional  features. 
Clough  was  less  self-centred,  less  eager  to  do  battle,  more 
puzzled  as  to  which  way  to  advance,  though  none  the  less 
unshaken  in  his  belief  in  the  final  conquest  of  truth.  Yet 
it  was  Clough  who  sacrificed  his  fellowship,  and  with  it 
all  that  he  loved  at  Oxford,  to  Carlyle's  appeal  that  we 
admit  no  insincerities  into  our  lives.  Equally  character- 
istic of  Clough  was  it  that  he  should  subsequently  have 
exclaimed:  "Carlyle  led  us  out  into  the  wilderness  and 
left  us  there." 

Neither  Clough  nor  Arnold  distinguished  himself  at 
college,  though  each  later  attained  a  fellowship.  The 
several  minor  educational  posts  that  Clough  held  and 
Arnold's  inspectorship  of  schools,  in  which  he  spent  his 
life,  seem  sufficiently  iiuoiigruous  occupations  for  men  of 
such  temper.  But  these  things,  however  faithfully  per- 
formed, were  the  avocations  of  their  lives;  literature  was 
tlicir  vocation.  The  earliest  of  Clough 's  volumes.  The 
Bolhic  of  Tober-7in-Vu(dicli,  bears  date  1848,  though  he 
had  written  earlier  poetry  than  this.  Arnold  followed 
with  the  publication  of  The  Strayed  Reveller  and  Other 
Poems  in  the  next  year.  lie,  too,  had  begun  earlier  with 
prizes  for  verse  at  Rugby  and  Oxford;  and  he  gave  over 
the  writing  of  poetry  about  1870  to  become  tlie  most 
consummal(;  and  finislied  literary  critic  of  his  age. 
Clough  died  prematurely  in  1801,  his  work  uncompleted; 


224  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

Arnold  lived  on  to  1888,  professor  of  poetry  for  ten  years 
at  Oxford,  and  exerting  a  powerful  influence  that  has  not 
yet  failed  by  his  sound  and  brilliant  literary  and  other 
criticism. 

The  poetry  of  Clough  is  more  distinctively  individual, 
more  fully  the  expression  of  the  poet's  inner  self  than  that 
of  any  other  poet  easily  to  be  named  since  Wordsworth. 
Clough  is  passionate,  never  mystical,  direct  and  even 
practical  at  times;  his  thought  is  often  concentrated,  and 
sometimes  it  clogs  and  impedes  its  own  solution  from  his 
very  fullness  of  utterance.  He  is  not  a  master  of  conven- 
tional poetical  form  like  Arnold;  music,  metres,  and  the 
gauds  and  ornaments  of  verse  are  nothing  to  him  save 
where  such  things  must  enter  vitally  into  the  poetic 
thought.  He  chose  the  dactylic  hexameter  —  a  most  un- 
English  measure  —  for  two  of  his  longer  poems,  and  he 
managed  it  in  a  rambling  and  uneven  manner,  though  it 
must  be  confessed  not  without  a  certain  congruency  with 
his  uneven,  rambling  subject-matter.  In  full  recognition 
of  the  merits  of  these  longer  poems  and  the  more  ambi- 
tious Dipsychus,  a  problematically  successful  adaptation 
of  the  Faust-motif  to  our  own  late  times,  Clough  seems 
to  the  present  writer  happier  in  his  shorter  lyrical  poems, 
where  he  obtains  a  concentration  and  a  semblance  of 
unity  not  his  elsewhere.  In  lyrics  such  as  the  ever-popu- 
lar "Qua  Cursum  Ventus,"  "The  Hidden  Love,"  "Say 
not  the  struggle  naught  availeth,"  we  have  the  thought- 
ful, ruminating  spirit  fraught  with  spiritual  feeling  that 
declares  Clough  a  Wordsworthian  indeed,  but  with  a  dis- 


THE  VICTORLVN  LYRISTS  825 

tinctive  originality  of  his  own.  There  are  few  poems,  for 
example,  more  significant  of  their  author  and  of  the  spirit 
of  his  time  than  the  lines  entitled  "The  Music  of  the 
World  and  of  the  Soul,"  beginning: 

Why  should  I  say  I  see  the  things  I  see  not  ? 

^^^ly  be  and  be  not  ? 
Show  love  for  that  I  love  not,  and  fear  for  what  I  fear  not  ? 
And  dance  about  to  music  that  I  hear  not  ? 
Who  standeth  still  i'  the  street 
Shall  be  hustled  and  justled  about ; 
And  he  that  stops  i'  the  dance  shall  be  spurned  by  the  dancers*^ 
feet. 

•  J    •• 

Are  there  not,  then,  two  musics  imto  men  ?  — 

One  loud  and  buld  and  coarse. 

And  overpowering  still  perforce 

All  tone  and  tune  beside ; 


The  other,  soft  and  low, 

Stealing  whence  wc  not  know. 
Painfully  heard,  and  ciusily  forgot. 
With  pauses  oft  and  many  a  siletuc  strange 
(And  silent  oft  it  seems,  when  silent  it  is  not). 

But  listen,  listen,  listen,  —  if  haply  be  heard  it  may; 
Listen,  listen,  listen,  —  is  it  not  sounding  now  ? 

The  poetry  of  Matthew  Arnold  was  the  work  of  his 
youth,  as  wc  have  seen.  Thyrsi,',',  his  beautiful  elegiac 
tribute  to  his  dead  friend,  Clougii,  a|)pcared  in  180(5,  five 
years  after  the  latter's  death ;  and  in  the  following  year, 
Arnf)ld  published  the  last  of  his  several  voluniosof  poelry. 
Except  for  the  noble  drama,  Empcdoclcn,  though  it  has 
practically  no  motion,  and  a  small  group  of  narrative 


226  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

pieces,  conspicuous  among  them  the  blank-verse  poems, 
"Sohrab  and  Rustum"  and  "Balder  Dead,"  an  elegiac 
character  pervades  all  that  Arnold  has  written  in  verse. 
And  the  early  poems  which  contained  a  group  of  fine  son- 
nets, "The  Forsaken  Merman,"  "Resignation,"  "Youth's 
Agitation,"  and  "The  Gipsy  Child,"  struck  the  note  and 
determined  the  range  of  the  poet's  art  which  he  was 
scarcely  to  amplify  in  his  later  work.  With  Empedo- 
cles,  in  1852,  appeared  the  two  series  of  lyrics  later 
known  under  the  titles,  "Switzerland,"  and  "Faded 
Leaves";  and  here  fall  "Dover  Beach,"  "A  Summer 
Night,"  "A  Wish,"  and  many  another  lyric  —  for  they 
are  truly  such  —  wherein  speaks  the  stoical  regret  of 
the  poetry  of  doubt.  More  elaborately  elegiac  are  the 
touching  and  eloquent  poems  "Rugby  Chapel,"  "The 
Scholar  Gipsy,"  once  more  reminiscent  of  Clough, 
"Heine's  Grave,"  the  "Stanzas  from  the  Grand  Chart- 
reuse," and  those  to  the  memory  of  "Obermann." 

The  poetry  of  Arnold  marks  not  only  a  revolt  against 
medisevalism  in  religion  and  thought  but  also  a  revulsion 
against  that  decorative  medisevalism  in  poetry  and  art 
that,  beginning  among  the  earlier  romanticists,  ruled 
variously  in  the  poetry  of  Keats,  Tennyson,  and  the 
authors  constituting  what  was  later  known  as  the  pre- 
Raphaelite  school.  Rationalistic  and  even  agnostic  as 
Arnold  was  in  his  attitude  towards  established  religion, 
his  artistic  faith  went  back  to  the  ancients,  finding  in  their 
calm  and  certain  art  that  "consolation  and  stay  "  denied 
the  conscientious  artist  amid  the  babel,  the  indecision, 


THE  VICTORIAN  LYRISTS  227 

and  the  bizarre  distortions  of  modern  art.  Arnold  thus 
became,  in  his  theories  about  literature  as  in  his  practice 
of  poetry  and  prose,  the  exponent  of  classicism  and 
classic  ideals;  although,  as  to  immediate  English  poetic 
influences  upon  him,  he,  like  Clough,  was  one  of  the  latest 
of  the  disciples  of  the  Wordsworthian  cult  of  nature  and 
did  not  wholly  escape  that  subjective  revealment  which  is 
characteristic  of  our  modern  time.  There  is,  in  conse- 
quence of  his  classicism  of  ideal,  however,  a  restraint 
about  Arnold's  poetry,  a  fastidiousness  that  is  unlike  any 
other  English  poet  of  notable  rank  unless  we  go  back  to 
Thomas  Gray.  Arnold's  finish  is  only  exceeded  by  that  of 
Tennyson  himself,  nnd  his  taste  was  even  more  rigorous 
and  exacting.  The  characteristics,  in  a  word,  of  Arnold's 
poetry  are  its  atmosphere  of  culture,  its  spiritual  freedom, 
and  its  classical  restraint.  He  shrank  from  the  display 
of  subjective  feeling,  however  he  may  have  fallen  into  it 
at  times,  and  found  something  essentially  vulgar  in  poet- 
ical or  other  wearing  of  one's  heart  on  one's  sleeve. 
Byronisrn,  Wcrtherisrn,  with  the  whole  sentimental  school, 
were  abhorrent  to  him  as  the  tinsel  and  barbaric  jewelry 
of  inferior  romantic  art;  and  his  style,  his  diction,  and  his 
verse  are  chaste  and  simple  as  his  thought  is  habitually 
noble  and  self-poiscd.  Arnold  at  his  best  is  always  natural, 
pure,  dignified,  and  strong.  He  has  the  classic  repose  and 
sense  of  design;  he  possesses  the  classical  clearness  and 
stoical  temper.  And  if  he  be  wanting  in  passion  of  the 
heart  (as  his  "Tristram  and  Iseull."  siifficienlly  aflesls), 
he  has  abundantly  that  elegiac  passion  of  the  iniiul.  that 


228  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

troubled  doubt  of  self,  of  the  world,  of  heaven  itself,  that 
distinguished  the  thinking  men  of  his  time.  This  it  is 
that  gives  to  the  poetry  of  Arnold  a  quality  of  enduring 
interest  above  the  possibilities  of  mere  art  for  art's  sake 
or  mere  ethical  and  religious  impressionism  however 
fervid  and  exalted. 

Romanticism  has  been,  now  for  more  than  a  century, 
a  word  to  conjure  with,  vague  and  undefined  as  its  bounds 
remain.  And  it  is  obvious  that  within  this  ample  limbo 
of  ideas  many  diverse  things  are  readily  comprehended. 
The  poetry  of  Scott,  even  that  of  Byron,  was  often  pic- 
turesque and  sentimental;  it  was  likewise  rhetorical  and 
superficial  from  an  imperfect  sympathy  at  times  with  the 
subject  in  hand  or  for  other  reasons.  In  a  word,  in  its 
earlier  manifestations,  the  romantic  impulse  in  England 
had  not  shaken  itself  free  from  the  conventional  spirit 
of  the  previous  age.  It  was  but  a  half -revolt;  the  absolute 
rebels  were  Shelley  and  Keats,  and  the  way  had  been 
pointed  them  by  Coleridge.  Theirs  was  a  finer  spirit, 
more  eager  was  their  pursuit  of  abstract  beauty.  Their 
poetry  was  sensuous  rather  than  sentimental,  impatient 
of  restraint,  intensely  subjective  and  yet  objectively 
minute  in  its  expression  of  detail.  Above  all,  it  is  charac- 
terized by  a  high  seriousness  that  is  as  distant  from  the 
flippancy  of  Byron  as  it  is  distinguishable  from  the  didac- 
tic gravity  of  Wordsworth.  This  newer  and  choicer 
romanticism  was  the  basis  of  the  Tennysonian  art,  how- 
ever the  laureate  conventionalized  it.  It  was  likewise  the 
stock,  with  Keats  as  the  intermediary,   out  of  which 


THE  VICTORIAN  LYRISTS  229 

sprang  the  poetry  of  the  group  known  as  the  pre-Raphael- 
ite  writers  together  with  much  that  has  come  after. 

The  term  pre-Raphaehte  is  unhappy,  however  em- 
ployed. It  was  the  self-assumed  designation  of  the  little 
brotherhood  of  painters  that  formed  about  Holman  Hunt, 
John  Millais,  and  Dante  Gabriel  Rossetti  in  protest  against 
the  cult  of  Raphael  that  marked  the  academic  painters 
of  the  forties;  and  it  was  employed  to  designate  their  art 
and  that  of  many  others  who  were  thought  in  some  wise 
to  resemble  them.  The  term  was  also  transferred  to  liter- 
ature owing  chiefly  to  Rossetti's  distinction  in  poetry, 
and  has  been  extended  to  include  William  Morris  and 
Algernon  Charles  Swinburne,  not  here  to  mention  many 
lesser  names.  The  late  Mr.  William  Sharp,  earliest 
chronicler  of  the  cult  and  late  follower  in  its  wake,  finds 
"between  the  works  of  the  band  of  artists  who  preceded 
Raphael  and  those  who  were  called  after  them  in  the 
nineteenth  century  ...  no  real  resemblance;  the  only 
bond  that  united  them  being  that  of  going  directly  to 
nature  for  inspiration  and  guide."'  Certain  it  is  that  the 
brotherhood  made  a  compact  "to  adopt  a  style  of  abso- 
lute independence  as  to  art  dogma  and  convention";  and 
that  in  so  doing,  where  nature  failed  —  as  she  seems  not 
infrccpienlly  to  have  failed  them  —  the  brethren  trusted, 
as  Rossetti  himself  put  it,  each  to  his  "own  intelligence."' 
A  certain  definition  of  outline  and  richness  of  color  has 
been  posited,  too,  for  the  pre-Raphaelite  painters,  (piali- 

'   Dante  (Idhriel  Uoxmili,  a  Rrrnrd  and  a  Study,  1883. 
>  E.    L.  C  ary,  The  lltj.i.icllis,  1900,  p.  3;j. 


230  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

ties  transferable  and  distinguishable  in  pre-Raphaelite 
poetry  as  well.  This  art  possesses  undeniable  originality, 
but  it  is  less  that  compassed  by  an  unaffected  return  to 
nature  than  the  strangeness  and  other- worldliness  that 
results  from  a  deliberate  recurrence  to  mediaeval  models 
and  a  reincarnation,  so  to  speak,  of  mediaeval  ideals.  In 
a  word,  the  pre-Raphaelite  poetry  and  art  was  a  reaction- 
ary movement,  a  return  to  an  older  artistic  tradition, 
leveled  as  much,  so  far  as  it  was  militant,  against  the 
rationalizing  spirit  of  our  time  as  against  contemporary 
artistic  creeds.  How  this  paralleled  the  return  to  a  me- 
diaeval ritual  which  the  Oxford  movement  induced  must 
be  patent  to  the  most  superficial  observer. 

Dante  Gabriel  Rossetti  was  the  heart,  soul,  and  flower 
of  the  "  movement " ;  the  rest  are  pre-Raphaelite  only  in  so 
far  as  they  partake  of  his  spirit  or  share  in  the  qualities 
that  were  his.  The  son  of  a  poet  and  a  patriot,  banished 
his  native  Italy  as  a  rebel  against  tyranny,  young  Rossetti 
early  showed  his  blood  in  his  precocious  artistic  talent  and 
his  impatience  with  the  restraints  of  the  artist's  education 
of  his  time.  The  formation  of  the  brotherhood,  the  pub- 
lication of  that  now  precious  little  journal  of  protest.  The 
Germ,  in  1850,  the  criticism  and  attack  of  it  and  the  noble 
and  generous  defense  of  the  new  ideals  by  Ruskin  —  all 
these  things  we  know,  told  in  a  hundred  different  ways.^ 
Later  came  the  acquaintance  with  the  Oxford  circle,  in 
which  William  Morris  and  Swinburne  with  their  Oxford 

'  See  especially  the  Introduction  to  a  new  edition  of  The  Germ  by 
William  Michael  Rossetti,  1901. 


THE  VICTORL\N  LYRISTS  231 

and  Cambridge  Magazine,  1857,  had  headed  for  literature 
a  similar  revolt;  then  the  tragic  death  of  Rossctti's  wife, 
that  deepened  his  art  and  his  melancholy,  sinking  him, 
towards  the  close  of  the  twenty  years  yet  left  him,  into  a 
wreck  of  his  former  self,  morbid,  fitful,  passionate,  and 
irresponsible. 

Rossetti  is  the  most  purely  lyrical  of  the  poets  of  his 
group  and  the  most  untrammelled  by  rule  or  precedent. 
His  pictures  we  are  told  were  painted  with  much  labor  and 
toil  in  an  incessant  struggle  for  perfection;  his  poems  came 
with  a  far  greater  spontaneity,  from  the  famous  "Blessed 
Damosel,"  written,  it  is  said,  when  the  poet  was  but 
eighteen,  to  the  many  ballads,  all  of  them  fraught  with 
lyrical  feeling  and  a  strange  rare  quality  of  poetic  descrip- 
tion, and  to  the  passionate,  exquisitely  wrought  sequence 
of  sonnets.  The  House  of  Life.  Rossetti  is  made  up  in  his 
poetry  of  several  apparently  contradictory  elements.  His 
realism  (though  seldom  the  realism  of  nature)  is  of  the 
most  uncompromising  tyj)e  and  distinguished  by  a  cer- 
tain rigidity,  not  to  call  it  severity.  On  the  other  hand, 
his  ideality  carries  him  into  the  most  visionary  of  themes, 
betraying  itself  in  spirituality  and  even  mysticism.  Mr, 
Pater  has  comi)ared  Rossetti  to  his  namesake  Dante, 
discovering  in  him  the  same  "definition  of  outline,"  the 
same  "care  for  miinite  and  definite  imagery,"  and  a  like 
intensely  concrete  power  of  i)oetici)arti(ularization.  After 
enumerating  two  distinct  functions  of  poetrj',  the  reveal- 
ing to  every  eye  "the  ideal  asi)ecls  of  common  things" 
and  "the  imaginative  creation  of  things  that  are  ideal 


232  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

from  their  very  birth,"  the  critic  concludes:  "Rossetti  did 
something  excellent  of  the  former  kind;  but  his  character- 
istic, his  really  revealing  work,  lay  in  adding  to  poetry  a 
fresh  poetic  material  of  a  new  order  of  phenomena  in  the 
creation  of  a  new  ideal."^  That  this  ideal  was  wholly  a 
healthy  one  has  been  questioned  again  and  again.  Bu- 
chanan's notoriously  unlucky  attack  on  Rossetti's  poetry 
as  "fleshly,"  retracted,  as  it  was,  fully  and  nobly,  if  almost 
too  late,  may  be  dismissed  with  the  regret  that  it  still 
afiPects  critical  estimates  of  the  greatest  of  the  pre-Raphael- 
ites.^  There  is,  however,  none  the  less,  an  excess  of  feeling 
over  governing  thought  in  Rossetti's  poetry,  a  material- 
ism at  times  almost  gross,  in  the  passionate  symbolism 
which  the  poet  employs  to  figure  forth  the  surging  tide 
of  the  lover's  emotion  (in  The  House  of  Life,  for  example), 
that  can  be  paralleled  only  in  the  similar  sensuous  imagery 
which  mars,  to  a  chaster  northern  taste,  the  adoration  of 
certain  Romanist  poets  in  their  poetic  cult  of  the  Virgin.^ 
Notwithstanding,  if  we  except  Shakespeare,  there  is  no 
such  sequence  of  sonnets  as  Rossetti's  House  of  Life,  with 
their  choice,  rich  diction,  their  weight  of  fervid  passion, 
and  their  perfect  poetic  execution.   Wordsworth,  Keats, 

1  See  the  essay  prefixed  to  the  selections  from  Rossetti  in  Ward's 
English  Poets,  iv,  C33. 

*  "The  Fleshly  School  of  Poetry  "was  published  as  "by  Thomas 
Maitland,"  in  the  Contemporary  Review,  October,  1871.  See  A  Look 
Round  Literature,  1877,  for  a  complete  recantation,  and  the  noble 
"Lines  to  an  Old  Enemy." 

'  See  the  poetry  of  Crashaw  and  the  volumes  Carmina  Mariana,  ed. 
O.  Shipley,  three  vols.,  1894,  1902,  passim. 


THE  VICTORIAN  L^TIISTS  233 

and  others  achieve  distinction  in  individual  sonnets; 
there  is  no  other  collection  of  modern  times  sustained  at 
so  high  and  so  impassioned  a  poetic  level.  However 
intellectuality  must  be  denied  to  Rossetti,  and  however 
far  he  is  from  the  poetry  of  purpose  that  bids  fair  to 
relegate  the  divine  art  to  the  place  of  an  humble  hand- 
maiden of  "sociology',"  we  may  agree  with  Mr.  Watts- 
Dunton  that  the  poetry  of  Rossetti  is  charged  with 
"an  ever-present  apprehension  of  the  spiritual  world  and 
of  the  struggle  of  the  soul  with  earthly  conditions."  '  It 
is  this,  with  his  aloofness  from  contemporary  interests, 
his  poetic  intensity,  his  rigid  sense  of  form,  and  his  quaint 
romantic  spirit  —  a  spirit  never  grotesque,  however  — 
that  makes  Rossetti  in  the  fullest  sense  the  poet  of  the 
mediaeval  reaction. 

Nor  are  these  latter  qualities,  though  their  mode  of 
expression  is  different,  in  any  degree  wanting  in  the  poetry 
of  Rossetti's  gifted  sister  Christina  Rossetti.  Two  years 
Dante's  junior,  as  definitely  and  passionately  a  lover  of 
art  as  her  brother,  she  wa.s  even  more  i)recocious,  and  had 
published  verses  before  those  of  hers  that  api)eared  in 
The  Germ.  If  earthly  love,  the  quintessence  of  human 
passion,  rules  the  poetry  of  Dante  Rossetti,  it  is  heavenly 
love,  wherein  is  tlic  renunciation  of  the  world,  that  fine 
asceticism  to  wliifli  the  nicdia'val  Italian  tonii)cr  was  like- 
wise equal,  that  is  the  heart  and  soul  of  the  beautiful 
poetry  of  Christina  Rossetti.    Whether  her  ixxnis  be 

'  S<'c  on  Uic  whole  topir  T.  Walts-Dunlon's  well-known  essay  (jn 
Rossetti  in  tlie  Eiicydupadia  lirilannica. 


234  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

denominated  sacred  or  secular,  the  spirit  that  looks  out 
beyond  the  grave,  that  annihilates  time  and  space,  that 
broods  much  on  life  and  death,  interpenetrating  the 
thought  of  one  with  the  other  —  this  is  the  spirit  that 
rules  her.  It  is  the  spirit  of  "We  buried  her  among  the 
flowers,"  "When  I  am  dead,  my  dearest,"  and  "Too  late 
for  love,  too  late  for  joy,"  exquisite  lyrics  that  only  an 
exquisite  taste  could  redeem  from  gloom  and  morbidity. 
It  has  been  well  said  that  Christina  Rossetti  alone  among 
the  important  poets  of  the  reign  carried  in  her  "the  full- 
ness of  faith."  Hers  was  not  a  faith  like  Cardinal  New- 
man's, the  result  of  a  derationalizing  process  that  fought 
its  way  back  against  the  current  of  the  age  to  an  impreg- 
nable medifeval  stronghold;  nor  yet  that  of  Browning, 
optimistic,  unreasoning,  ingrained,  and  half  a  matter  of 
inheritance.  Christina  Rossetti's  faith  —  and  faith  is  the 
best  part  of  her  poetry  —  like  the  overtones  of  a  vibrated 
string,  adjusts  all  thoughts  to  the  love  of  God.  It  is  this 
together  with  the  sincerity  and  purity  of  her  art  that  keeps 
her  from  the  morbid,  the  grotesque,  and  the  despairing. 
The  only  other  actual  member  of  the  pre-Raphaelite 
brotherhood,  deserving  of  memory  for  this  association, 
if  not  quite  for  his  poetry,  is  Thomas  Woolner,  the  painter, 
William  Bell  Scott,  already  mentioned,  and  Sir  J.  Noel 
Paton  group  here  less  for  the  circumstance  of  any  real 
association  with  Rossetti  and  his  circle  than  for  the  fortui- 
tous accident  that  both  likewise  combined  the  arts  of 
poetry  and  painting.  There  is  a  metrical  freedom  about 
the  verse  of  Paton,  and  he  has  left  at  least  one  lyrical  sue- 


THE  VICTORLVN  LYRISTS  235 

cess  in  the  beautiful  song  beginning,  "There  is  a  wail  in 
the  wind  to-night."  Unconnected  with  pre-Raphaelitism 
though  contemporary  with  its  earlier  course,  is  the  poetry 
of  Sidney  Dobell,  already  mentioned  for  his  war  songs, 
and  that  of  Alexander  Smith,  gibbeted  together  in  a 
merciless  review  of  Aytoun's  as  the  poets  of  "the  spas- 
modic school."  The  likeness  of  these  poets  lies  in  their 
faults,  and  of  these  inequality  is  the  chief.  Dobell  seems 
neither  to  have  known  when  to  stop  nor  how  to  reject; 
and  yet  there  is  much  of  the  poet  in  him.  He  burns  at 
times  with  a  genuine  martial  spirit  in  Englayid  in  Time  of 
War,  185G,  a  spirit  not  shared  by  Smith,  who  hud  collabor- 
ated with  him  in  Sonnets  of  the  War,  in  the  previous  year. 
The  lyrical  "Ballad  of  Keith  of  Ravclston,"  Dobell's  best 
known  poem,  deserves  its  popularity,  and  there  are  other 
poems,  "Return,"  and  the  fanciful  "A  Chanted  Calen- 
dar," for  example,  that  leave  him  a  place,  though  hum})ler, 
it  may  be  surmised,  than  he  would  have  claimed  for  liim- 
.self  among  the  mid-Victorian  lyrists.  It  has  been  said  that 
if  Dobell,  with  his  ready  emotions,  was  a  belated  devotee 
of  IJyronism,  Alexander  Sinilh,  Scolchmnn  though  he  was, 
found  his  inspiration  in  Keats.  Smith's  poetry  is  con- 
tained in  three  volumes,  published  between  1853  and  1861. 
Like  Dobell,  he  was  enthusiast ieally  received,  only  to  fall 
upon  a  later  neglect.  His  Citj/  Poems,  in  which  (Glasgow 
is  his  insfjiration,  offer  many  illustrations  of  his  power  of 
"description  touched  with  high  imagination,"  and  the 
lyric,  "Barbara,"  if  somewhat  strained  and  wordy  in 
parts,  is  sustained  by  a  genuine  poetic  fervor. 


236  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

In  William  Morris,  poet,  painter,  designer  in  art,  printer 
and  socialist,  we  meet  with  one  of  the  most  engaging  and 
interesting  personages  of  Victorian  times.  Morris  was 
artistic  activity  incarnate,  and  to  plan  with  him  was  to 
attempt  instant  execution,  moulding  ways  and  means  into 
subjection  to  the  idea  which  was  often  realized  with  a 
degree  of  approximation  miraculous  to  a  less  practical 
and  precipitate  nature.  Morris  was  fortunate  in  a  child- 
hood surrounded  with  the  comfort,  protection,  and  lib- 
erality that  makes  the  expansion  of  a  man's  real  nature 
possible.  From  the  first  the  spirit  of  mediaeval  romance 
ruled  in  him,  touching  him  not  only  as  it  touched  some 
others  at  a  single  point,  but  in  archaeology,  architecture, 
painting,  poetry,  everywhere  it  may  be  surmised  except  in 
religion;  for  it  has  been  well  said  that  "it  was  the  religion 
of  beauty  rather  than  the  beauty  of  any  one  religion  or 
creed  that  appealed  to  him."  ^  With  a  nature  open  to  all 
such  impressions,  Morris  fell  in  with  the  "Tennysonian 
enthusiasm"  that  was  ruling  in  the  Oxford  of  his  day, 
with  Ruskin  and  his  writings,  and  with  the  pre-Raphaelite 
brotherhood.  In  185G,  Morris  and  his  friends  founded 
The  Oxford  and  Cambridge  Magfazine,  destined  to  run  for  a 
year,  and  turned  first  artist  and  then  poet.  It  was  two 
years  later  that  The  Defence  of  Guinevere  was  published. 
This  remarkable  volume  is  out-and-out  pre-Raphaelite, 
and  in  it  appeared  that  part  of  the  poetry  of  Morris  that 
most  nearly  approaches  the  lyrical.  The  long  and  inter- 
esting later  career  of  Morris,  his  stupendous  labors  and 

*  A.  Noyes,  in  William.  Morris,  English  Men  of  Letters,  1908,  p.  15. 


I 


THE  VICTORIAN  LYRISTS  237 

admirable  success  in  translation  and  epic  poetry,  the  revo- 
lution that  he  effected  in  the  popular  applications  of  decor- 
ative art,  his  fervent  socialism,  prose  writings  and  lectur- 
ings  on  that  and  on  other  topics  —  none  of  these  concern 
us.  We  have  just  called  The  Defence  of  Guinevere  out-and- 
out  pre-Raphaelite;  it  was  such  in  its  picturesque  mediae- 
valism,  in  its  height  of  simple  coloring,  and  in  the  large 
part  that  a  certain  vivid  and  naive  description  bears  to 
the  whole.  But  even  aside  from  its  title  and  its  "doings 
with  the  affairs  of  King  Arthur, "  there  is  in  this  volume  a 
reflex  of  the  prevalent  influence  of  a  certain  very  definite 
part  of  Tennyson's  poetry.  In  "Oriana,"  in  "The  Lady 
of  Shalott "  even,  more  especially  in  the  dramatic  lyric, 
"The  Two  Sisters,"  we  recognize  so  distinctively  what 
we  have  come  to  call  the  pre-Raphaelite  note  that  we  are 
surprised  to  find  these  poems  in  Tennyson's  volume  of 
1842  with  the  "Morte  d'Arlhur,"  and  "Sir  Galahad," 
remembering  that  The  Idijll.s  of  the  King  were  not  com- 
plete (barring  "Balin  and  Halan")  until  the  year  18()1). 
This  is  the  Tennyson  thai  airecled  Morris;  of  the  larger 
elegiac,  cla.ssical,  i)olili(ai,  patriotic,  and  realistic  Tenny- 
son, Morris  shows,  neither  here  nor  eiscwluTe,  a  trace; 
and  he  developed  the  wide  sweep  and  incessant  onwiinl 
progress  of  the  stories  of  The  Karthbj  Paradise,  as  he 
caught  the  noble  sj)irit  of  Norse  legend,  elsewhere.  The 
poems  of  The  Defence  of  Guinevere  a,rc  none  of  Iheni  strictly 
lyrics,  for  each  is  based  on  a  story  or  situatic^i  in  which 
both  narrative  and  description  are  involved:  "Siianieful 
Death"  for  example,  how  a  knigiit  was  treacherously 


238  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

slain,  with  his  brother's  vengeance,  told  by  that  brother 
years  after  the  deed;  "The  Sailing  of  the  Sword,"  how  a 
lover  sailed,  only  to  return  recreant  with  "a  tall  white 
maid"  on  his  knee.  And  yet  here  again,  in  view  of  the 
unity,  the  music,  and  the  single  emotion  which  animates 
such  poems  and  the  concentration  of  this  last,  not  its 
representation  in  the  shift  and  change  of  action,  we  have  a 
lyrical  rather  than  a  dramatically  pervasive  spirit.  The 
success  of  such  poems  consists  in  their  power  to  suggest 
by  a  flash  of  description  here,  a  touch  of  narrative  there, 
always  by  way  of  some  picturesque  detail,  a  picture  suf- 
fused with  a  strong  though  objective  emotion,  usually  in 
reminiscence  of  an  event  afar  ofiF.  This  is  impressionist 
poetry,  and  like  all  impressionist  art,  in  danger  of  vague- 
ness and  a  lack  of  definition  and  significance.  To  explain 
this  by  reference  to  some  deep  spiritual  symbolism,  as 
has  been  done,  is  to  obscure  the  understanding.  Morris's 
poetry  is  as  beautifully  and  fittingly  decorative  as  his 
wall-paper,  and  as  little  suffused  with  mystery.  He  has 
instilled  into  a  fanciful  mediaeval  milieu,  as  unreal  as  that 
of  Tennyson,  suggestions  of  heroic  human  passions,  more 
vivid  than  Tennyson's  and  more  briefly  conveyed,  but 
in  no  wise  more  actual.  The  later  poetry  of  Morris  yields 
a  few  poems  more  lyrical  in  the  accepted  sense.  None  of 
these  are  more  charming  than  the  intercalary  "months" 
of  The  Earthly  Paradise  with  their  fine  sense  for  nature, 
or  the  amoebsean  love  song  beginning,  "In  the  white- 
flowered  hawthorn  brake,"  in  "Ogier  the  Dane,"  in  the 
same  work.    Morris  might  have  attained  the  concentra- 


THE  \1CT0RL\N  LYRISTS  239 

tion  of  the  lyric  in  its  narrowest  sense.  He  could  do  nearly 
anything  that  he  attempted.  As  it  is,  his  real  joy  was  in 
the  boundless  reaches  of  epic  song. 

It  was  in  1857  that  Algernon  Charles  Swinburne  came 
up  to  Oxford  from  Eton  to  fall  into  immediate  associa- 
tion with  the  Oxonian  pre-Raphaelites  and  to  be  stirred 
equally  with  them  by  the  powerful  influence  and  example 
of  Rossetti.  The  eldest  son  of  an  admiral,  of  ancient  and 
honorable  stock,  young  Swinburne  failed  of  his  degree 
at  Oxford,  although  he  seems  early  to  have  acquired  an 
extraordinary'  facility  in  foreign  languages,  French  and 
Italian  as  well  as  Latin  and  Greek.  Indeed,  no  English 
poet  has  so  grasped  and  appreciated  the  literary,  espe- 
cially the  poetic,  achievements  of  other  men  native  and 
foreign,  modern  and  ancient;  and  none  has  ever  so  em- 
ployed that  knowledge  in  widening  the  range  of  his  own 
poetic  powers.  Verses  in  Latin,  Greek,  in  modern  French 
and  the  language  of  old  Provence,  all  flowed  with  equal 
readiness  from  his  facile  pen;  and  eloquently  worded 
criticism  in  i)roso,  allx-it  largely  impressionistic  and  intui- 
tive, was  as  much  his  birthright  iis  his  surprising  mastery 
over  the  music,  the  imagery,  and  the  multiple  forms  of 
lyrical  and  other  measures.  Of  the  mode  of  Swinburne's 
life  we  know  very  little;  his  recent  death,  in  1909,  at  the 
age  of  seventy-two,  still  leaves  him  one  of  the  least 
personally  known  f)f  our  contemporary  poets.  Ilis  works 
exhibit  an  extraordinary  ca[)a(ity  for  fricndsliij);  or,  at 
least,  for  a  generous  appreciation  of  the  (jualilicsof  great- 
ness among  his  contemporaries.    In  his  early  youth  he 


240  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

visited  Landor  in  Italy;  and  that  venerable  poet,  Victor 
Hugo,  and  Mazzini  (to  mention  no  others)  remained 
among  his  adorations,  loved  scarcely  on  this  side  of  idola- 
try. Indeed,  the  essence  of  Swinburne's  nature  was  enthu- 
siasm. His  was  the  last  triumphant  burst  of  Shelleian 
revolutionary  song,  glorious,  impassioned,  impracticable, 
never-ending  song.  He  is  superb  in  vituperation,  in 
panegyric  often  sublime. 

A  list  of  the  volumes  of  Swinburne  would  almost  match 
that  of  Tennyson;  even  though  we  leave  out  the  prose, 
his  two  or  three  narrative  poems,  and  his  half  dozen 
dramas,  the  body  of  his  poetry  which  is  purely  lyrical  is 
to  be  found  in  nearly  a  dozen  volumes.  Omitting  his 
earlier  work,  it  was  in  Aialanta  in  Calydon,  1865,  a  tragedy 
after  the  Greek  manner,  that  Swinburne  first  burst  into 
fame.  Despite  his  many  subsequent  triumphs  over  the 
complexities  of  an  elaborate  lyrical  technique,  the  poet 
never  surpassed  the  music  and  the  poetic  beauty  of  the 
famous  choruses  of  this  drama  which  remains  the  best 
known  of  his  works.  In  the  next  year  appeared  the  first 
series  of  Poems  and  Ballads,  a  volume  as  unparalleled  for 
the  exuberance  and  inventiveness  of  its  lyrical  effects  as 
it  is  frank  in  its  dithyrambic  expression  of  erotic  passion. 
Whatever  may  have  been  the  poet's  early  touch  with  pre- 
Raphaelitism,  here  he  had  cut  loose  once  and  for  all  from 
precedent  and  example.  Here  was  a  poet  whose  technique 
was  a  revelation,  in  comparison  to  whose  absolute  sway 
over  verse  Tennyson's  perfections  seemed  tame  and 
studied,  one  the  impetuosity  and  torrent  of  whose  pas- 


THE  VICTORIAN  LYRISTS  241 

sionate  imagery,  like  the  ocean  in  the  agitation  of  storm, 
left  the  raptures  of  Shelley  cold  as  the  shimmer  of  moon- 
beams on  still  water.  It  is  deplorable  that  to  the  many, 
among  them  genuine  lovers  of  poetrj',  Swinburne  has  been 
too  often  finally  appraised  by  this  one  remarkable  vol- 
ume, often  reprinted  (in  America  at  least)  with  a  catch 
title  derived  from  one  of  the  most  characteristic,  as  it  is 
one  of  the  most  beautiful  if  vividly  erotic,  poems  of  the 
book.  There  is  infinitely  more  than  this  in  Swinburne; 
and  even  in  his  frankest  and  most  daring  moments,  he  is, 
neither  here  nor  elsewhere,  decadent.  The  often  hazard- 
ous enthusiasm  which  Swinburne  lavishes  on  the  love 
of  man  for  woman,  he  bestows  in  other  poems  with  equal 
warmth  on  his  poetical  ideals,  on  the  heroes  of  his  personal 
worship,  on  nature,  and  on  the  themes  of  his  prose  criti- 
cism. In  Songs  before  Sunrise,  1871,  and  Songs  of  Two 
Nations,  1875,  two  volumes  of  splendid  and  imperishable 
poetry,  wc  have  the  highest  expression  of  Swinburne's 
political  faith  and  creed.  Always  an  avowed  republican, 
he  was  really  less  the  upholder  of  any  one  form  of  govern- 
ment than  a  natural  rebel  against  all  schemes  of  consti- 
tuted authority.  It  was  this  that  gave  emphasis  to  his 
fulminations  against  kingcraft.  It  accounts,  too,  for  his 
onslaughts  on  constituted  reli^'ion  and  for  that  religion 
of  Fate  that  holds  the  unfathoniable  background  of  his 
intermittent  pa.ssages  between  paganism  and  an  outright 
negation  of  dod.  Having,'  declared  that  "man's  soul  is 
man's  God  still,"  hung  like  the  guiding  light  of  a  ship  at 
the  mast's  head,  he  continues, 


242  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

Save  his  own  soul's  light  overhead. 
None  leads  him,  and  none  ever  led, 

Across  earth's  hidden  harbor-bar. 

Past  youth  where  shoreward  shallows  are. 
Through  age  that  drives  on  toward  the  red 

Vast  void  of  sunset  hailed  from  far. 
To  the  equal  waters  of  the  dead; 

Save  his  own  soul  he  has  no  star, 
And  sinks,  except  his  own  soul  guide, 
Helmless  in  middle  turn  of  tide. 

These  are  not  the  idle  words  of  a  thoughtless  singer  of 
love-lays,  and  no  one  can  read  them,  the  bitter  invectives 
of  such  poems  as  "The  Watch  in  the  Night"  and  "Before 
a  Crucifix,"  or  the  eloquence,  ideality,  and  aspiration  of 
"Hertha,"  of  the  "Marching  Song"  (to  mention  only 
these  at  random),  and  remain  of  any  such  opinion.  Means 
and  detail  were  as  little  to  Swinburne  as  they  ever  were  to 
Shelley ;  the  political  ideal  comprehended  in  the  one  vague, 
glorious  word  "freedom"  burned  in  each  with  a  steady 
flame,  and  armed  each  with  a  scourge  of  scorpions  for  all 
that  is  base,  ignoble,  tyrannical,  and  inimical  to  the  innate 
manliood  of  man. 

With  the  second  series  of  Poems  and  Ballads,  1878,  the 
enthusiasm  of  Swinburne  takes  on  not  so  much  a  new 
phase  as  a  deeper  and  more  fervent  appreciation  of  the 
beauty,  the  mystery,  the  overmastering  influence  of 
nature.  In  poems  such  as  "The  Forsaken  Garden,"  "A 
Wasted  Vigil,"  "Neaptide,"  "On  the  Cliffs"  (in  the  next 
volume.  Songs  of  the  Springtides,  1880),  Swinburne  takes 
his  place  among  the  great  English  lyrists  of  nature.  And 
his  preoccupation  is  with  the  deeper  ground  tones  that 


I 


THE  VICTORLVN  LYRISTS  243 

strike  wonder,  terror,  and  worship  into  the  primitive 
mythologizing  mind.  As  Mr.  Woodberry  has  put  it  in  a 
passage,  the  whole  of  which  should  be  read  and  pondered, 
"Fire,  air,  earth,  and  water  are  the  four  elements  from 
which  his  very  vocabulary  seems  made  up;  flame,  wind, 
and  foam,  and  all  the  forms  of  light  are  so  much  a  part  of 
his  color-rhythm  that  they  become  an  opaline  of  verse 
peculiarly  his  own.  .  .  .  The  blurring  effect  of  this  mass 
of  indefinable  sensation,  especially  when  metaphorically 
employed,  even  more  than  the  overcharge  of  vocal  sound 
in  the  verse,  accounts  for  that  impression  of  vacuity  of 
meaning  that  Swinburne's  poetry  in  general  makes  on 
readers  not  habituated  to  his  manner."'  Swinburne's  is 
the  crowTi  of  English  poetry  of  the  sea.  To  him  the  sea  is 
"the  nature-symbol  of  England"  as  of  liberty,  of  hope, 
and  of  the  life  of  mankind,  and  his  splendid  tumultuous 
lines,  with  their  incessant  (iaiicc,  sj)arkle,  and  break  into 
foam,  seem  the  very  incarnation  in  i)oetry  of  the  spirit 
of  the  wide  ocean.  One  other  lyrical  enthusiasm  of  Swin- 
burne remains  to  be  chronicled,  his  love  and  delicate 
unflcrstanding  of  childluMid.  There  are  no  more  beautiful 
f)rM'ms  in  the  language  than  the  thirty  odd  lyrics  entitled 
"The  Dark  Month,"  .md  I  he  accompanying  poems, 
"A  Child's  I*ily,"  "Coniparisons,"  and  the  rest  thai  aj)- 
jM-ar  in  tlu;  vohirnc  ('ntitlcd  Tri:<fr(nu  of  Lj/ovr.ssr.  Tlicre 
is  about  them  a  greater  sinoolhncss,  a  purer  sen  nil y,  a 
more  artistic  restraint  than  is  the  great  jjoet's  elsewhere. 

•  G.  E.  WorxllxTTy,  Swinhurnr,  Conlcmporarjf  Mm  of  f^tlrm,  Nrw 
York.  1905,  p.  Hi. 


2U  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

Still,  rather  than  one  of  these  let  us  quote,  however  well 
known,  a  distinctively  Swinburnian  lyric,  one  of  the  few 
in  which  the  poet  has  restricted  himself,  unless  compelled 
by  the  limitations  of  an  exotic  verse-form,  to  the  limits 
of  three  stanzas.   We  omit  the  second. 

For  a  day  and  a  night  love  sang  to  us,  played  with  us. 

Folded  us  round  from  the  dark  and  the  light; 
And  our  hearts  were  fulfilled  of  the  music  he  made  with  us. 
Made  with  our  hearts  and  our  lips  while  he  stayed  with  us. 
Stayed  in  mid  passage  his  pinions  from  flight 
For  a  day  and  a  night. 

But  his  wings  will  not  rest  and  his  feet  will  not  stay  for  us: 

Morning  is  here  in  the  joy  of  its  might; 
With  his  breath  he  has  sweetened  a  night  and  a  day  for  us: 
Now  let  him  pass,  and  the  myrtles  make  way  for  us; 

Love  can  but  last  in  us  here  at  his  height 
For  a  day  and  a  night. 

The  marvellous  virtuosity  of  Swinburne  as  a  lyrist  has 
long  been  a  matter  of  universal  recognition,  his  mastery 
over  metre,  language,  imagery,  each  in  its  perfection. 
Much,  too,  has  been  written  of  his  "dangerous  facility" 
in  verse,  of  his  inexhaustible  wealth  of  figure  and  symbol, 
and  of  that  extraordinary  power  that  can  bear  off  lyrical 
emotion  on  steadily  onward-rushing  pinions  in  flights  that 
put  to  the  test  —  and  often  disgrace  —  the  most  consum- 
mate readers  of  poetry.  Condensation  and  organized 
brevity  were  not  among  the  poetical  gifts  of  Swinburne; 
yet  he  has  triumphed  again  and  again  in  the  sonnet  and 
in  the  still  more  restricted  limits  of  the  rondel.^  But  to 

'  Cf.  A  Century  qf  Roundels,  1883;  and  especially  the  Sonnets  on  the 
Dramatists. 


THE  VICTORLIN  LYRISTS  £45 

deny  informing  significance  to  this  various,  copious,  vital, 
and  opalescent  poetry  is  to  misunderstand  the  poet's 
large,  passionate,  and  elemental  nature.  There  is  the 
poetry  of  thought,  and  there  is  the  poetry  of  feeling.  The 
first  we  admire  for  its  craftsmanship,  for  its  hammered 
perfection,  wrought  out  on  the  anvil  of  the  mind,  and  we 
think  it  deep  and  important  because  we  recognize  the 
effort  expended  upon  it.  The  poetry  of  feeling,  however 
artistic  in  its  expression,  is  not  wrought  out,  but  born  as 
men  are  bom,  the  living  organic  offspring  of  the  parent, 
reproducing  his  features,  his  nature;  and  it  is  inevitably 
what  it  is.  Such,  although  it  contain  neither  name,  date, 
nor  concrete  happening,  is  the  most  autobiographical  of 
all  poetry;  for  it  reflects  the  very  soul  of  the  poet,  and 
being  the  most  autobiographical,  it  is  likewise  the  most 
essentially  lyrical.  We  may  think  ourselves  into  the  sem- 
blance of  what  we  are  not;  the  expression  of  emotion,  of 
the  passion  that  sways  and  the  enthusiasm  that  leads, 
cannot  falsify  nature.  The  lyrical  poetry  of  Swinburne  is 
in  a  sense  more  essential  poetry  than  the  poetry  of  Tenny- 
son, BrownirifT,  or  iSIatthcw  Arnold,  because  it  is  less 
sophisticated  witii  tiic  iiilcllcrlnal  processes  —  be  they 
artistic  restraint,  eccenlric  icaniiriu,  or  a^aiostic  ratiocina- 
tion —  because  it  is  more  undividedly  the  expression  of 
the  elemental  emotions. 

There  remain  a  few  lesser  [kx-Is  who  arc  generally 
reputed  to  have  shared  in  I  lie  i)fe-l{a|)l:aelile  inlhu-nces 
of  the  time,  cillicr  (iireclly  (.r  indircclly.  Among  Ilu-tn 
arc    Richard  Watson   l>ix(jn,  the  friend  of   M(»rris,  but 


i 


Me  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

unlike  him  in  both  the  restraint  and  the  slender  volume 
of  his  poetry,  and  Lord  de  Tabley,  who,  writing  under 
several  pseudonyms,  reflected  in  his  skilful  verse  the 
influences  besides  of  many  masters.  More  truly  followers 
of  Rossetti  and  Swinburne  were  Arthur  O'Shaughnessy 
and  the  blind  Philip  Burke  Marston.  And  to  these 
may  be  added  the  name  of  Roden  Noel  and  the  accom- 
plished critic,  Frederick  Myers.  Of  these  only  O'Shaugh- 
nessy and  Noel  find  representation  in  the  Oxford  Book  of 
Verse.  Noel  should  live,  if  for  no  more,  for  the  sad  little 
lyric,  "They  are  waiting  on  the  shore";  O'Shaughnessy, 
who  had  the  lyrist's  music  in  his  veins,  for  the  late  pre- 
Raphaelite  blossom,  "I  made  another  garden,  yea."  The 
general  influence  of  Rossetti  on  succeeding  English  poets 
has  been  immense,  even  although  the  name  of  pre- 
Raphaelite  is  to  be  denied  to  many  who  came  under  his 
spell.  Rossetti  is  the  main  conduit  of  the  influence  of 
Keats  to  later  Victorians.  Thus  William  Sharp,  whose 
somewhat  thin  earlier  poetry  was  directly  inspired  by  his 
devotion  to  the  dying  Rossetti,  lived  to  join,  in  his  later 
"other  self,  Fiona  Macleod,"  the  Celtic  revival  that  still 
remains  a  notable  feature  of  our  immediate  contemporary 
times.  The  affiliations  of  the  late  Oscar  Wilde,  outside  of 
his  plays  and  his  fiction,  point  inevitably  to  the  aesthetic 
movement  of  which  the  prose  writings  and  theorizings  of 
Ruskin,  the  poetry  of  the  pre-Raphaelites,  and  the  prac- 
tical and  socialistic  applications  of  William  Morris  were 
all  parts.  Neither  the  preposterous  egotism  and  pose  of 
the  man,  the  brilliant  persiflage  of  his  conversation  and 


THE  MCTORUN  LYRISTS  217 

dramatic  dialogue,  nor  the  appalling  tragedy  of  his  life 
can  shut  the  eyes  of  ingenuous  criticism  to  the  fact  that 
the  place  of  Wilde,  in  the  realm  of  pure  poetry,  is  a  notable 
and  honorable  one.  Moreover,  ingenious  scrutiny  will 
find  little  in  his  poetry,  outside  of  the  distortion  of  the 
motive  in  the  story  of  Salome,  justly  to  be  designated 
decadent.  Warmth  of  imagmation  in  the  suggestion  of 
sensuous  images  there  is,  somewhat  more  than  in  Keats, 
decidedly  less  than  in  the  younger  Swinburne  or  in  cer- 
tain narrative  poems  of  Marlowe  or  Shakespeare.  On  the 
other  hand,  there  arc  few  nobler  poems  of  its  type  than 
the  address  to  England,  "Ave  Impcratrix,"  few  more 
tender  little  threnodies  than  "Requiescat,"  addressed  to 
his  sister,  nor  many  more  touching  i)ortrayals  of  self  than 
the  "Apologia"  and  the  sonnet,  "Ilclas!"  It  is  in  some 
of  his  sonnets  —  "  Madonna  Mia  "  or  the  "  Vita  Nuova  "  — 
and  in  his  use  of  certain  j)hr:ises  of  refrain  that  Wilde  most 
nearly  resembles  his  master  Rossetti;  his  narrative  poems, 
with  their  fretjuently  hai)py  observance  of  nature  and 
their  fine  swing  of  conlinuousness  overrunning  the  stanza, 
smack  more  of  his  oilier  master  Keats  whom  he  adored. 
Lastly,  it  would  be  difiiculL  to  find  in  the  language  so 
poignant,  despairing,  .so  grim  and  artistically  inevitable 
a  lyrical  cry  as  that  of  that  terrible,  wonderful  jxxmu 
wherein  his  own  abasement,  misery,  and  contrition  for 
crime  are  universalized  into  permanent  art,  "The  Ballad 
of  Reading  Gaol." 

Among  poets  not  yet  named  who  began  to  writi-  in 
the  fifties,  three  denumd  mention.     Mr.  Alfred  Austin 


248  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

succeeded  Tennyson  in  1902  as  poet  laureate  of  England; 
Mr.  Austin's  political  opinions  were  less  open  to  cavil  than 
were  those  of  Swinburne.  The  others  are  James  Thomson, 
the  poet  of  The  City  of  Dreadful  Night,  and  George  Mere- 
dith, the  famous  novelist,  last  of  the  great  Victorians  to 
leave  us.  Thomson  was  the  son  of  a  sailor  who  became  a 
paralytic.  The  boy  was  reared  in  poverty  and  educated 
at  the  Caledonian  Asylum ;  thereafter  he  led  an  irregular 
life,  passing  through  a  number  of  positions  as  teacher  in 
the  army,  various  clerkships  and  secretaryships.  In  early 
youth  be  lost  his  betrothed,  and  ill  luck,  accentuated  by 
intemperance,  seems  always  to  have  attended  him.  He 
was  an  enthusiastic  student  of  Shelley,  and  from  him,  with 
the  help  of  the  friend  of  his  youth,  Charles  Bradlaugh, 
the  avowed  atheist,  Thomson  soon  fell  into  the  revolu- 
tionary and,  what  was  worse,  the  pessimistic  theories 
that  embittered  his  life  and  pervaded  his  poetry.  Though 
he  published  mainly  after  1880,  his  poetry  belongs  to 
some  twenty -five  years  of  his  life.  Thomson  died  in  1882 
"  after  four  terrible  weeks  of  intemperance,  homelessness, 
and  desperation,"^  and  his  name  has  been  associated  once 
and  for  all  with  the  poetry  of  pessimism  and  despair. 
Limpidity  and  unaffectedness  of  diction  with  a  resigned 
fatalism,  born  of  a  clear  sight  of  things  as  they  are  on 
those  grey  and  solemn  days  when  the  heart  forgets  hope 
and  the  spring,  such  are  among  the  notes  of  Thomson  as 
he  sings: 

1  See  H.  S.  Salt,  Life  of  Thomson  ("B.  F.").  1898,  pp.  158  flf. 


THE  VICTORIAN   LYRISTS  249 

Weary  of  erring  in  this  desert  life. 

Weary  of  hoping  hopes  for  ever  vain. 
Weary  of  struggling  in  all-sterile  strife. 

Weary  of  thought  which  maketh  nothing  plain, 
I  close  my  eyes  and  calm  my  panting  breath. 
And  pray  to  thee,  O  ever-quiet  Death ! 

To  come  and  soothe  away  my  bitter  pain. 

The  strong  shall  strive,  —  may  they  be  victors  crowned; 

The  wise  still  seek,  —  may  they  at  length  6nd  truth; 
The  young  still  hope,  —  may  purest  love  be  found 

To  make  their  age  more  glorious  than  their  youth. 
For  me;  my  brain  is  weak,  my  heart  is  cold. 
My  hope  and  faith  long  dead;  my  life  but  bold 

In  jest  and  laugh  to  parry  hateful  ruth. 

In  poems  such  as  "To  our  Ladies  of  Death,"  of  which 
these  are  the  two  opening  stanzas,  in  the  terrible  "In- 
somnia," as  in  a  score  of  beautiful  lyrics,  "A  Requiem," 
"The  fire  that  filled  my  heart  of  old,"  "Day,"  "Night," 
will  be  found  a  passionate  sorrow  which  is  never  cynical, 
never  degenerate,  but  always  imaginatively  beautiful  and 
expressed  with  the  certainty  of  touch,  the  unaffected  mas- 
tery of  style,  which  is  the  mark  of  great  poetry.  As  a 
matter  of  fact  there  was  a  happier  and  more  buoyant  side 
to  Thomson's  nature,  which  aj)i)ears,  too,  in  his  poetry,  if 
only  sporadically.  Characteri.stic  of  this  happier  mood 
is  the  "idyl"  as  he  called  it,  "Sunday  at  Ilaniijstead," 
which  he  offers  as  "a  very  humble  incuibcr  of  the  great 
and  noble  London  mob,"  I)ut  In  wlii<li  lie  Ikis  transfigured 
the  ordinary  exixTicuccs  of  a  holiday  outing  by  suburban 
train  and  on  the  (;ommon  with  the  touch  and  the  .senti- 
ment of  poetry. 


250  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

The  poetry  of  George  Meredith  began  with  a  volume, 
published  as  early  as  1851,  when  the  poet  was  but  twenty- 
three  years  of  age;  and  some  six  other  volumes  followed, 
the  last,  A  Reading  of  Life,  in  1901.  Meredith  was  thus 
precocious  as  a  poet,  but  fiction  soon  absorbed  him;  and 
he  was  warmly  welcomed  by  judicious  criticism  from  the 
first,  although  the  world  only  returned  to  his  poetry 
when  his  place  among  the  foremost  of  English  novelists 
became  unassailable.  Deeply  interesting  in  itself  and  for 
the  suggestion  of  a  possible  autobiographical  import  in 
the  case  of  a  nature  almost  as  reticent  as  Shakespeare's, 
is  Modern  Love,  1862,  in  which  is  told,  in  a  series  of  sonnet- 
like poems  (actually  stanzas  of  sixteen  lines),  a  tragic 
story  of  the  estrangement  of  two  souls,  essentially  noble 
but  "ever  diverse."  As  a  tale  of  emotion,  told  not  for  the 
story  but  for  the  passion  involved,  Modern  Love  is  justly 
comparable  with  the  lyrical  sonnet  sequences.  The  theme 
has  been  described  as  "a  noble  spiritual  agony,  the  last 
ordeal  of  that  finely  tempered  clay  that  will  not  accept 
the  senses,  except  on  the  terms  of  the  spirit."^  Doubtless 
it  is  all  this  to  the  exceptional  reader  who  demands  that 
poetry  "bring  him  a  romantic  sense  of  esoteric  posses- 
sion." But  to  most  others,  despite  many  noble  lines  and 
incessant  flashes  of  that  keen  insight  that  is  so  distinc- 
tively Meredith  the  novelist's,  these  poems  seem  over- 
strained, unnatural,  and  the  emotion  at  times  —  dare  we 
avow  it?  —  ignoble.  We  turn  to  the  author's  wholesomer 
poetry  with  a  sense  of  relief.  Meredith  is  a  lyrist  of  extraor- 
^  Le  Gallienne,  Attitudes  and  Avowals,  1910,  p.  234. 


THE  VICTORL\N  LYRISTS  251 

dinary  originality  and  of  high  and  serious  achievement. 

As  a  young  man  he  often  wrote,  as  in  that  exquisite  song 

"Angelic  Love,"  so  praised  by  Charles  Kingsley,  with  a 

directness  and  musical  simplicity  widely  at  variance  with 

his  later  involved  and  difficult  style.   To  this  simplicity 

he  has  often  returned  in  his  latest  poetry.    What  could 

be  more  direct  or  more  poetically  significant,  for  example, 

than  these  lines  entitled  "Alternation"  from  A  Reading 

of  Life? 

Between  the  fountain  and  the  rill 
I  passed,  and  saw  the  mighty  will 
To  leap  at  sky;  the  careless  run. 
As  earth  would  lead  her  little  son. 

Beneath  them  throbs  an  urgent  will. 
That  here  is  play,  and  there  is  war. 
I  know  not  which  had  most  to  tell 
Of  whence  we  spring  and  what  we  are. 

In  Meredith  rule  with  equal  sway  a  subtly  intellectualized 
feeling  for  nature,  based  on  a  remarkably  detailed  and 
sensitive  observation  of  her  ways,  and  a  fine  discrimina- 
tion of  the  spiritual  significance  of  such  aspects  of  nature 
to  man.  Moreover,  these  things  rule  in  Meredith  as  they 
have  not  ruled  an  English  poet  since  Wordsworth.  But 
there  arc  many  divergencies  between  these  two;  for 
Wordsworth's  siin{)le,  liomely,  definite  realism  that  sees 
the  things  that  all  men  see  but  finds  a  meaning  in  them 
thiit  only  the  j)ootical  seer  can  disc;crn,  we  have  in  Morc- 
dlLh  a  wealth  and  elaboration  in  detail  that  often  over- 
powers and  occasionally  cloys  of  its  own  fullness.  In  that 
exquisite  poem,  for  example,  "Love  in  the  Valley,"  it  is 


252  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

not  nature  in  any  single  aspect  that  warms  the  lover's 
lyrical  rapture,  but  love  transfiguring  the  aspects  of  all 
things,  the  spring,  the  winter,  flower,  bird,  leaf,  the  very 
personal  defects  of  the  beloved,  assuredly  an  observation 
no  less  true  than  the  simple  monotone  of  any  ordinary 
love  lyric,  but  one  far  less  capable  of  treatment  within 
the  bounds  of  the  artistic  unity  that  lyrical  poetry  de- 
mands. In  this  poem,  as  in  the  glorious  nature  lyric, 
"The  Woods  of  Westermain,"  and  elsewhere,  Meredith 
has  triumphed  as  few  have  triumphed  in  the  diflScult  art 
of  the  poetry  of  pure  idea.  Indeed,  Meredith  shares  with 
Swinburne  a  power  of  sustained  lyrical  flight  which  is  not 
always  his  reader's;  as  he  shares  with  the  same  great 
lyrist  a  sensibility  delicately  attuned  to  the  visible  beauty 
and  glory  of  external  nature,  together  with  a  tendency, 
at  times,  to  nebulous  impressionism  that  leaves  the  mind 
certain  as  to  the  element  of  beauty,  but  dubious  precisely 
as  to  its  significance.  These  are  some  of  the  things  that 
give  to  such  a  poem  as  "The  Lark  Ascending,"  with  its 
exuberance  of  imagery,  its  unmatchable  bubble  of  beauti- 
ful words,  and  its  rhapsody  of  sound,  its  supreme  place 
among  Meredith's  lyrics,  and  its  position,  hardly  second 
to  two  such  different,  but  equally  perfect,  poems  as  those 
of  Hogg  and  Shelley  addressed  to  the  same  poet-inspiring 
bird. 

Among  the  poets  whose  song  began  in  the  sixties, 
Robert  Buchanan  demands  a  word  here.  Though  bom 
in  England,  Buchanan  combined  with  a  Scottish  aggres- 
siveness and  confidence  in  opinion,  a  bellicosity  of  spirit 


THE  VICTORL\N  LYRISTS  253 

that  is  usually  associated  with  the  less  prudent  temper  of 
the  Irish  Celt.  But  Buchanan's  was  likewise  a  sense 
of  fairness  —  some  have  called  it  inconsistency  —  that 
caused  him  to  retract  generously,  as  in  the  case  of  Ros- 
setti,  when  once  he  knew  himself  in  the  wrong.  Chronic- 
ally an  objector  and  defiantly  independent,  Buchanan 
was  a  singularly  able  and  versatile  man,  writing  facilely 
essays,  criticism,  fiction,  drama  and  poetry,  narrative, 
satirical  and  lyric.  It  may  be  surmised  that  Buchanan's 
animosities  and  attacks  on  friend  and  foe,  with  his  self- 
confidence  which  was  often  overweening,  had  much  to 
do  with  keeping  his  reputation,  in  poetry  at  least,  below 
his  actual  merits  during  his  life.  He  came  up  to  London, 
a  mere  lad,  in  1800,  in  the  company  of  a  talented  young 
fellow-poet,  David  Gray,  who  died  with  more  promise 
than  fulfilment  a  year  or  so  later;  and  Buchanan  cele- 
brated his  memory  in  a  model  biography  as  well  as  in 
verse.  As  a  poet,  Buchanan  began  with  classical  subjects 
(Undertones,  1865),  soon  followed  by  Idyls  and  Legends  of 
Inverburn,  in  which  his  dramatic  power  first  manifested 
itself.  But  he  soon  found  more  congenial  subjects  in  the 
dramatic  and  pathetic  realism  of  his  London  Poems,  1866. 
Armed  with  the  fierce  indignation  of  the  moralist  rather 
than  with  the  wliip  of  tlie  satirist,  there  is  a  virility  and 
dramatic  imaginativeness  about  such  poems,  for  example, 
as  "Nell,"  "Tiger  Bay,"  or  "The  Dead  Mother,"  that 
places  them  in  their  melodramatic  category  beside  the 
poetic  pathos  of  Hood  and  the  inevitable  prose  fidelity  of 
Crabbe. 


254  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

In  his  later  volumes  Buchanan  wrote  more  of  the  north 
country  and  much  in  narrative  form;  but  in  The  Book  of 
Orm,  1870,  especially,  he  bore  his  part,  true  to  his  blood, 
in  the  Celtic  revival,  and  displayed  a  mystic  quality 
scarcely  to  have  been  suspected  of  so  pronounced  a  realist. 
It  is  impossible  here  to  follow  this  capable  and  versatile 
writer  into  the  innumerable  poetic  efforts  in  which  he 
reached  perhaps  only  too  often  merely  a  qualified  success. 
Buchanan  is  always  honest,  independent  and  belligerent; 
his  humor  is  abundant  and  he  sees  straight  morally,  if  not 
always  artistically.  His  technique  is  ready  and  compet- 
ent, it  is  rarely  distinguished;  not  that  he  is  careless  so 
much  as  that  his  style  lacks  lift.  It  has  been  claimed  for 
Buchanan  that  he  is  peculiarly  representative  of  the  later 
Victorian  spirit.  If  so,  it  must  be  in  his  attitude  of  nega- 
tion, sustained  by  an  outspoken  independence  that  makes 
him  habitually  the  voice  of  the  minority:  at  times  of  a 
minority  of  one.  It  is  this  that  speaks  in  the  interesting 
volume  The  New  Rome,  wherein  he  sings  —  for  the  spirit 
is  throughout  lyrical  —  against  imperialism,  chauvinism, 
and  Mr.  Kipling,  against  the  materialism,  banality,  and 
wickedness  of  our  lives,  against  our  false  and  convention- 
alized God  and  philosophies  of  God,  and  against  the  cheer- 
ful laissez  faire  of  the  poet,  who 

Happy  and  at  home 
In  all  the  arts  and  crafts  of  learned  Rome, 
He  sees  the  bloody  pageant  of  despair, 
All  Nature  moaning  'neath  its  load  of  care. 
Takes  off  his  hat,  and  with  a  bow  polite 
Chirps,  "God  is  in  his  heaven!  The  world's  all  right!" 


THE   VICTORL\N   LYRISTS  255 

All  honor  to  the  honest  discontent  with  things  as  they  are 
and  the  bold  spirit  that  prompts  the  burning  lines  of 
poems  like  the  "Carmen  Deiiic,"  "The  Lords  of  Bread," 
or  the  terrible  "Sisters  of  Midnight."  Neither  the  pre- 
Raphaelites  and  their  followers  with  their  cult  of  the 
eternal  beautiful,  much  less  the  lighter  virtuosi  in 
poetry  whose  business  it  is,  in  Buchanan's  own  words, 
"to  twang  the  lyre  and  strum  the  banjo,  leaving  politics 
to  the  thieves  and  thinking  to  the  philosophers,"  are 
so  representative,  however  they  may  share  in  the  petty 
eddies  of  the  current  of  the  time.  Buchanan  was  a  man  of 
large  and  varied  utterance,  keenly  alive  to  the  world  in 
which  he  lived,  sympathetic,  moved  by  human  suffering, 
too  kind  for  a  satirist,  too  agitated  to  attain  to  the  crea- 
tion of  great  poetry.  It  is  singular  how  near  the  passion- 
ate indignation  of  Buchanan  brings  him  at  times  to  the 
political  rhapsody  of  Swinburne.  Compare,  however, 
"  The  Songs  of  Empire  "  with  "  The  Songs  before  Sunrise, " 
and  we  can  fed  the  difrcrciu-c  between  zealous  and  emin- 
ently successful  elo(iuence  and  that  inspiration  and  white 
glow  of  authentic  poetry  which  the  jealous  gods  of  song 
grant  only  to  him  who  is  to  the  poetic  manner  born. 

Indeed  it  is  just  this,  the  question  of  manner.  As  we 
look  back  at  the  j)oets  of  the  Victorian  age  we  find  them 
easily  divisible  on  the  line  of  form,  where  difficulties  arise 
as  to  more  roriijilex  (list Incf ions.  To  |)ut  it  jmolher  way, 
we  might  divide  all  ikx-Is  into  the  two  great  classes,  those 
who  approach  their  art  by  means  of  llir  level  ways  of 
truth  and,  scrondly,  those  who  search  for  the  land  of  their 


256  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

heart's  desire  through  winding  lanes  of  beauty  and  en- 
chanted vistas,  at  times  along  the  hedges  and  trimly 
clipped  parterres  of  beauty  conventionalized  by  the  all 
too  careful  hand  of  man.  Not  to  pursue  the  figure,  obvi- 
ously the  Brownings,  Clough,  Patmore,  and  Buchanan, 
with  many  more  their  inferiors,  were  more  intent  on  the 
thing  said  than  on  the  manner  of  saying  it;  precisely  as 
Tennyson,  Matthew  Arnold,  and  the  pre-Raphaelites  were 
more  governed  by  form  and  those  conventions  that  raise 
poetry  from  a  mere  outlet  for  emotion  into  the  practice 
of  a  delicate  and  subtly  difficult  fine  art.  Truth  may  be 
reached  through  beauty,  and  beauty  by  means  of  truth. 
In  the  higher  regions  where  great  poetry  abides,  the  two 
are  indissolubly  united.  On  the  lower  slopes  are  many 
who  have  fallen  short  either  from  a  neglect  of  the  artistic 
or  from  a  neglect  of  the  significant. 

Among  the  lyrical  sisters  —  and  they  far  outnumber 
the  Muses  —  the  sisters  of  song,  of  elegy,  of  the  poetry  of 
love  or  the  poetry  of  nature,  of  joy,  sorrow,  and  the  rest, 
we  have  met  again  and  again  in  this  book  the  lightsome 
maid,  vers  de  sociele,  who  is  not  quite  so  foreign  in  ex- 
traction as  in  name,  nor  altogether  given  over  to  trivial- 
ity and  flirtation.  It  was  in  1873  that  the  first  volume  of 
Mr.  Austin  Dobson,  Vignettes  in  Rhymes  appeared;  and 
it  has  been  followed  by  several  like  volumes  of  his  dainty 
art  in  song,  as  it  begot,  in  its  more  immediate  time,  a 
number  of  lesser  followers  and  imitators.  Mr.  Dobson  has 
learnt  much  from  his  predecessors  from  Prior  to  Praed 
and  Calverley;  and  he  has  surpassed  them  all,  at  least,  in 


THE  VICTORL\N  LYRISTS  257 

his  technical  perfection  and  in  the  complete  success  with 
which  he  reproduces  the  setting  and  the  atmosphere  of 
the  aristocratic  society  of  the  ancien  regime  and  its  coun- 
terpart —  at  least,  as  we  imagine  it  —  in  eighteenth -cen- 
tury England.  Ease,  self-control,  delicacy  of  touch,  and 
perfection  of  finish,  all  are  qualities  of  the  poetry  of  Mr. 
Dobson.  His  wit  is  altogether  suflScient,  his  humor  well 
contained,  and  he  reaches  true  pathos  on  occasion.  Mock- 
ery and  light  burlesque,  too,  are  his;  but  no  coarseness  and 
not  a  trace  of  pedantry  or  intrusion  of  the  moralist's  dead- 
ening purpose.  The  technical  art  of  Mr.  Dobson  involves 
novelty,  less  the  novelty  that  invents  than  the  novelty 
that  revives.  It  would  be  too  much  to  say  that  he  was  the 
first  to  practise  in  English  the  intricate  mediteval  French 
verse  forms  —  the  rondel,  rondeau,  villanelle,  triolet,  and 
ballade  —  that  so  took  the  fancy  of  the  poets  and  poet- 
lings  who  were  young  in  the  seventies  and  early  eighties. 
It  was  the  prc-Raphaclitcs  who  did  this;  especially  Ros- 
sctti,  with  his  translation  in  the  original  ballade  form  of 
"Des  Dames  du  Temps  Jadis,**  and  Swinburne,  who  pub- 
lished rondeaux  as  early  as  1866.  The  late  Mr.  Andrew 
Lang,  who  so  long  ruled  among  us,  a  poet  among  critics, 
a  critic  among  the  poets,  is  also  to  be  reckoned  with  in 
these  early  revivals  of  French  forms,  which  he  handled 
with  the  lightness  and  precision  of  an  accomplished  verse- 
man.  It  is  interesting  to  find  Mr,  Bridges  writing  ron- 
deaux as  early  as  Mr.  Gosse,  in  1873;  and  to  have  the 
latter  claim  for  him  the  introduction  of  the  triolet  into 
English,  as  Mr.  Gosse  claims  for  himself  the  first  English 


258  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

villanelle  in  the  next  year.^  None  the  less,  save  for  Swin- 
burne's tour  de  jorce,  A  Century  of  Roundels  (as  he  calls 
them),  Mr.  Dobson,  more  than  any  one,  is  responsible 
for  the  popularization  in  English  of  the  forms  just  men- 
tioned and  for  triumphs  with  the  difficult  chant  royal  as 
well.  This  is  not  the  place  in  which  to  set  forth  the  nice- 
ties of  the  construction  of  these  delicate  pieces  of  French 
bric-a-brac.  They  are  pretty  and  pleasing,  and  now  hap- 
pily quite  out  of  the  poetic  fashion.  The  late  Mr.  Henley 
often  handled  them  in  serious  subjects  with  delicacy  and 
address.  It  was  not  often,  however,  that  tliey  attained 
to  the  dignity  of  Mr.  Dobson's  chant  royal,  "The  Dance 
of  Death,"  or  to  the  success  of  some  of  his  renderings  of 
Horace.  Moreover,  it  is  to  be  remembered  that  Mr. 
Dobson  is  far  too  good  an  artist  to  have  adhered  to  these 
exotic  forms  of  verse  as  the  only  medium  for  his  exquisite 
art  in  trifles. 

The  death  of  Robert  Louis  Stevenson  in  1894,  well  be- 
fore that  of  his  queen  and  his  immediate  fellows  in  litera- 
ture, demands  our  mention  of  him  here.  Stevenson's  was 
the  engaging  personality  of  the  vagabond,  a  wanderer  for 
health,  a  writer  of  various  and  unquestioned  gifts,  beloved 
and  mistrusted,  sincere  and  yet  a  poseur.  His  Child's  Gar- 
den of  Verses,  1885,  stands  alone  in  its  perfect  expression 
of  the  child's  life  from  the  child's  point  of  view.  His  other 

*  See  "  A  Plea  for  Certain  Exotic  Forms  of  Verse,"  Comhill  Magazine, 
XXXI,  July,  1877,  in  whicli  the  technique  of  these  French  forms  is  ex- 
plained. It  is  fair  to  Mr.  Gosse  to  say  that  his  graceful  and  signi6cant 
poetry  counts  for  far  more  than  a  happy  imitation  of  the  past. 


I 


THE  VICTORIAN   LYRISTS  259 

poetry  is,  much  of  it,  occasional;  but  in  his  later  work, 
Songs  of  Travel  (written  between  1888  and  1894),  the  deep- 
ening shadows  of  his  approaching  and  untimely  death  gave 
a  greater  depth  and  fervor  to  his  facile  and  happy  powers 
of  expression  in  verse.  Lucid,  direct,  and  unset  with  mere 
poetic  jewels,  there  is  an  unwonted  charm  about  Steven- 
son's thought  and  his  grace  in  the  use  of  words  that  is  not 
always  found  in  more  original  and  ambitious  poetry. 

More  distinctive  is  the  poetry  of  the  late  William  Ern- 
est Henley,  friend  and  companion  of  Stevenson.  Of  the 
collected  edition  of  Henley's  poetry,  first  printed  in  1898, 
five  years  before  his  death,  the  poet  says :  "  Small  as  is  this 
book  of  mine,  it  is  all  in  the  matter  of  verse  that  I  have 
to  show  for  the  years  between  1872  and  1897.  A  princi- 
pal reason  is  that,  after  spending  the  better  part  of  my 
life  in  the  pursuit  of  poetry,  I  found  myself  (about  1877) 
so  utterly  unmarketable  that  I  had  to  own  myself  beaten 
in  art,  and  addict  myself  to  journalism  for  the  next  ten 
years."'  But  ultimately  "beaten  in  art"  Henley  was  not, 
and  his  acceptance  on  his  reappearance,  in  1888,  was 
instantaneous,  and  his  repute  has  steadily  increased.  His 
work  in  poetry  began  with  the  extraordinary  scries  of 
sketches  in  verse  entitled  In  Hospital,  born  of  his  so- 
journ of  nearly  two  years  in  the  Old  Edinburgh  Infirmary. 
Here  that  "passionately  observant  imagination"  of  his 
has  given  us  pif;tures  the  vividness,  the  trullifulncss,  the 
insiglit  of  which,  each  into  its  own  human  mood,  must 
set  at  rest  the  notion  that  tunefulness  is  the  sole  criterion 
*  "Advcrtisemcnl,"  Pocm.i,  vA.  VMl,  p.  vii. 


260  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

of  lyrical  poetry.  Into  the  broader  life  of  the  metropolis 
Henley  carried  his  large  sane  spirit  and  poignantly  ob- 
serving eye,  reaching,  in  London  Voluntaries,  the  height 
of  this  ruling  feature  of  his  art.  But  Henley,  like  all  true 
poets,  is  at  heart  lyrical.  His  song  is  full  and  untremu- 
lous.  Life,  death,  fate,  and  love  are  his  among  the  immem- 
orial themes:  love  as  the  strong  man  has  known  it,  not 
the  dreamer  or  the  voluptuary;  death  as  the  brave  man 
faces  it,  scorning  the  crutches  of  outworn  faiths  and  the 
palliatives  of  narcotic  romances.  The  song  of  Henley 
is  always  dauntless,  manly,  brave,  and  strong;  he  finds 
life  bitter,  and  "fell"  "the  clutch  of  circumstance,"  but 
none  the  less  he  clearly  sings : 

I  am  the  master  of  my  fate 
I  am  the  captain  of  my  soul. 

Above  such  poems  of  steadfastness,  above  the  grim 
"Madam  Life  's  a  piece  of  bloom,"  and  the  many  short 
direct  lyrics  of  love,  too  charged  with  thought  merely 
to  sing,  too  burdened  with  passion  to  fall  into  epigram, 
I  prefer  the  irregular  musical  phrases  of  "  Margaritae 
Sorori,"  quoted  and  praised  by  Stevenson: 

The  smoke  ascends 

In  a  rosy-and-golden  haze.  The  spires 

Shine  and  are  changed.   In  the  valley 

Shadows  rise.  The  lark  sings  on.  The  sun. 

Closing  his  benediction. 

Sinks,  and  the  darkening  air 

Thrills  with  a  sense  of  the  triumphing  night  — 

Night  with  her  train  of  stars 

And  her  great  gift  of  sleep. 


THE  MCTORUN  LYRISTS  261 

So  be  my  passing! 

My  task  accomplished  and  the  long  day  done. 

My  wages  taken,  and  in  my  heart 

Some  late  lark  singing. 

Let  me  be  gathered  to  the  quiet  west. 

The  sundown  splendid  and  serene. 

Death. 

The  tuneful  chorus  of  Victorian  song  continued  to  the 
end  of  the  reign  and  beyond.  As  well  deny  the  perennial 
songsters  of  the  spring  as  affirm  that  poetry  in  the  Eng- 
lish tongue  has  not  continued  vocal  since  the  age  of  rea- 
son went  its  unlamented  way  to  death,  and  lyricism  re- 
awakened with  Blake  and  Chatterton  and  Burns.  The 
seventies  ushered  in  many  a  new  if  lesser  lyrist.  Among 
the  names  which  have  not  already  found  a  mention  in 
these  pages  are  John  Payne,  happy  translator  of  Villon, 
most  difficult  of  the  old  poets  of  la  vie  joyeuse;  strange 
original,  rhapsodic  Gerard  Hopkins,  hushing  his  song  in 
the  cloister  and  following,  a  generation  too  late,  in  the 
wake  of  the  Oxford  Movement;  bedridden  suffering  Eu- 
gene Lee-IIamilton,  writing  strongly  and  fervidly  in  his 
Imaginary  Sonnets  and  preserving  in  his  own  way  not  a 
little  of  the  pictorial  and  dramatic  power  of  his  master 
Browning;  Oliver  Maddox  Brown,  son  of  the  painter,  ex- 
traordinarily i>refocious  in  art  and  literature,  prose  and 
verso,  dying  at  little  more  than  the  age  of  Chatterton. 
The  Wordsworthians,  the  religious  poets,  and  the  sonnet- 
eers, too,  are  still  with  us  in  their  thousand  tributary  rills. 
"Frugal"  has  been  the  serious  and  ad<'(|uul('  lyrical  note 
of  the  eminent  critic  and  Shakespearean  scholar,  Professor 


262  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

Edward  Dowden;  while  Mr.  Samuel  Waddington,  besides 
his  judicious  collections  alike  of  the  Sonnets  of  the  Past 
and  the  Sonnets  of  the  Present,  has  added  sonnets  of  his 
own  to  the  most  teeming  of  the  garners  of  English  lyrical 
verse. 

And  now  this  chapter  of  the  Victorians,  already  too 
long,  must  be  brought  to  a  close.  The  lyrists  of  greater 
note  who,  beginning  to  sing  in  the  latter  years  of  the 
queen,  are  still  with  us  and  tuneful,  those  whose  poetry 
marks  the  prolongation  of  influences  still  vital  and  work- 
ing for  the  future,  must  claim  attention  in  the  following 
chapter.  For  the  nonce  we  must  keep  in  mind  that  the 
enumeration  of  influences  and  literary  phenomena  in 
their  order  as  they  arise,  loses  sight  of  much  that  existed 
side  by  side,  interlaced  and  mutually  affecting  each  the 
others.  For  example,  Wordsworth  was  a  laureate  and  a 
power  in  poetry  during  nearly  twenty  years  of  Tenny- 
son's and  BrowTiing's  activity.  Tennyson  succeeded,  a 
monarch  already  strong  in  a  popularity  that  lasted  almost 
unbroken  to  his  death;  while  on  the  other  hand.  Browning 
came  into  the  recognition  of  Browning  societies,  to  be- 
come a  cult  and  an  obsession,  only  in  the  eighties  when 
pre-Raphaelitism  had  expanded  from  the  intensity  of 
Rossetti  to  the  diffusion,  narrative  and  lyrical,  of  Morris 
and  Swinburne.  Moreover  there  were  grades  and  de- 
grees in  Victorian  poetry  to  an  extent  not  hitherto  known 
in  English  literature.  The  people  that  read  The  House- 
hold Philosophy  of  Tupper  constituted  neither  the  audi- 
ence of  The  Light  of  Asia,  The  Epic  of  Hades,  nor  that  of 


THE   VICTORIAN   LYRISTS  263 

The  Angel  in  the  House,  the  last  of  these,  be  it  noted,  alone 
lyrical;  and  the  age  begot  its  "Tory  poets,"  its  lyrists  of 
Chartism  and  Fenianism,  its  Catholic  poets,  as  well  as  its 
poets  of  "spasm,"  aspiration,  Protestantism  and  protest. 
But  enough:  assuredly  Victoria's  age  has  been  one  rich  in 
lyrical  poetry,  one  in  which  the  lyric,  too,  has  extended  its 
sphere,  its  diversity  of  theme  and  treatment.  That  it  has 
often  been  intellectualized  into  a  something  that  gives 
us  pause  as  to  our  definitions  is  not  to  be  denied.  That 
frequently  it  has  been  metamorphosed,  too,  into  a  richer, 
stranger  romanticism  than  our  literature  had  hitherto 
known,  is  likewise  to  be  acknowledged.  And  yet  the 
ground  notes  of  this  lyrical  chorus,  with  all  its  new  ca- 
priccios,  roulades,  and  novel  warblings,  remain  deep  seated 
in  the  essential  passions  of  man,  love,  hope,  the  political 
and  the  religious  instincts,  with  devotion  to  home,  coun- 
try, and  that  appreciation  of  man  in  nature  and  acted 
on  by  the  hidden  and  mysterious  influences  of  nature 
whifh  has  been  the  richest  contribution  of  English  poetry 
in  the  nineteenth  century  to  the  literature  of  the  world. 


I 


CHAPTER  VIII 

SOME    SUCCESSORS   OF   SWINBURNE   AND   MEREDITH 

N  one  of  an  interesting  and  exceedingly  valu- 
able series  of  essays  on  English  contemporary 
poets,  completed  a  few  years  since,  a  general 
grouping  of  the  more  considerable  names  of 
the  successors  of  Meredith  and  Swinburne  was  suggested, 
which  cannot  but  help  us  in  our  present  inquiry.^  There 
are  the  Wordsworthians,  eldest  and  most  orthodox  of 
whom,  Mr.  Robert  Bridges,  is  the  chief;  and  there  is  the 
rhapsodist,  Francis  Thompson,  and  Laurence  Housman, 
who  group  somewhat  together  from  their  discipleship  to 
the  pre-Raphaelites  in  general  and  to  Coventry  Patmore 
in  particular.  There  is  the  wide-spreading  and  active  Cel- 
tic revival,  headed  by  Mr.  Yeats  in  Ireland,  but  disclosing 
a  sympathetic  activity  in  Scotland  in  the  poetry  of  the  late 
"Fiona  Macleod"  and  in  lesser  poets  of  Wales  and  the 
Isle  of  Man.  Then  there  are  the  virile  "poets  of  empire," 
the  late  Mr.  Henley,  Mr.  Kipling  and  Mr.  Henry  Newbolt; 
and  the  "decadents,"  such  as  Mr.  Arthur  Symons  and 
the  late  Ernest  Dowson.  As  to  Mr.  T.  Sturge  Moore,  Mr. 
A.  E.  Housman,  and  the  late  John  Davidson,  the  critic 
finds  them  "differing  too  greatly  from  any  of  the  above 
groups   to   be   associated   with   them,   and   differing   as 

^  "The  Irish  Literary  Revival,"  by  Cornelius  Weygandt,  The  Se- 
wanee  Review,  xii.  No.  4,  October,  1904. 


SOME  SUCCESSORS  OF  SWINBURNE         265 

greatly  from  each  other";  and  he  goes  on  to  quote  from 
an  essay  of  Mr.  Yeats  in  which  that  admirable  poet  and 
critic  distinguishes  the  "interests"  or  absorbing  topics  of 
five  of  his  greater  contemporaries:  "Contemporary  Eng- 
lish poets,"  writes  Mr.  Yeats,  "are  interested  in  the  glory 
of  the  world  like  Mr.  Rudyard  Kipling;  or  in  the  order  of 
the  world  like  Mr.  William  Watson;  or  in  the  passion 
of  the  world  like  Mr.  John  Davidson;  or  in  the  pleas- 
ure of  the  world  like  Mr.  Arthur  Symons.  Mr.  Francis 
Thompson  ...  is  alone  preoccupied  with  a  spiritual  life." 
With  this  for  our  rough  chart  let  us  embark  on  the  per- 
ilous sea  of  the  present,  mindful  that  in  this,  our  work 
with  the  lyric,  we  are  neither  judging  any  author  in  the 
completeness  of  his  contribution  to  literature  nor  (when 
he  is  still  with  us)  even  in  the  completeness  of  his  lyrical 
achievement.  Moreover  few  judge  well,  deprived  of  the 
atmosphere  of  distance  and  the  perspective  of  time. 

By  "the  Wordsworthians "  among  our  contemporary 
poets,  Professor  Weygandt,  cit(>d  above,  ;v[)j)ears  to  mean 
less  those  whose  cult  is  nature  and  the  Delphic  interpret- 
ation of  her  moods  to  the  inner  spirit  of  man,  than  the 
poets  of  blended  Hebraic  order  and  Hellenistic  beauty, 
the  si)irit  of  which  has  inspired  the  august  succession 
from  Spens(!r  and  Milton,  to  (iray,  Wordsworth,  Tenny- 
son, and  Matthew  Arnold,  the  spirit  which,  in  a  word,  is 
most  justly  designated,  as  the  critic  has  designated  it, 
"fidelity  to  the  Puritan  point  of  view."'    It  cannot  be 

'  C.  Weyganrlt,  "The  Poetry  of  Mr.  Stephen  PhillipH,"  Sewanee  Re- 
view, January,  19f)0. 


266  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

a  mere  coincidence  that  these  men  were  all  of  univers- 
ity training  or  that  their  contrasted  compeers  —  Keats, 
Browning,  Henley,  and  Yeats  —  were  none  of  them  so 
bred.  The  individual  manifestations  of  the  Puritan  sense 
of  order,  of  responsibility,  of  an  afterworld  and  of  our 
relations  to  it  —  even  when  that  sense  leads  to  doubt 
and  negation  —  may  differ  in  individual  cases,  but  these 
things  are  the  ruling  qualities  that  inform  alike  the  po- 
etry of  Mr.  Bridges,  Mr.  William  Watson,  Mr.  Stephen 
Phillips,  and  others,  representative  poets  of  this  group. 

Mr.  Robert  Bridges  is  the  dean  of  our  present  English 
poetry,  his  earliest  work  having  appeared  as  far  back  as 
1873,  contemporary  with  the  beau  brocade  and  the  blue 
china  of  the  ballades  and  villanelles  of  Mr.  Dobson,  Mr. 
Gosse,  and  the  late  Mr.  Lang.  Mr.  Bridges  has  paid  tri- 
bute to  his  training  in  Latin  verses  and  in  the  poetic  treat- 
ment of  many  a  beautiful  myth  of  ancient  Greece.  He  has 
written  interesting  dramas,  in  one  especially.  The  Feast 
of  Bacchus,  attempting  "to  reproduce  the  artistic  collo- 
quialism of  Greek  Comedy,"  and  his  scholarship  in  mod- 
ern letters  is  attested  by  his  avowed  lyrical  debts  to  Ital- 
ian and  Spanish  poets.  In  our  immediate  range  of  the 
lyric  there  is  his  sonnet  sequence  The  Growth  of  Love, 
1890,  privately  printed  in  black  letter  type  that  its  in- 
nate poetic  beauty  might  be  fittingly  clothed  in  the  rai- 
ment of  artistic  printing;  and  thus  several  others  of  his 
books  have  been  printed.  On  the  other  hand,  Mr.  Bridges 
collected  his  Shorter  Poems  into  a  popular  form  in  1890, 
and  they  have  since  gone  through  many  editions.  The 


SOME  SUCCESSORS  OF  S^^^NBURNE         267 

lyrical  poetry  of  Mr.  Bridges  is  characterized  by  simpli- 
city, unafiFectedness,  and  a  wholesome  sentiment  in  which 
cheerfulness  and  hope  abide.  His  descriptive  fidehty  to 
detail  in  his  poems  treating  of  nature  —  "There  is  a  hill 
beside  the  silver  Thames,"  "Hark  to  the  merry  birds/' 
or  the  exquisite  "Garden  in  September,"  for  example  — 
possesses  both  charm  and  atmosphere.  He  is  full  of 
echoes  of  our  older  poets,  less  in  their  words  or  subject- 
matter  than  in  their  manner  and  air.  For  example,  his 
general  copiousness  and  ease  in  versification  and  his 
facile  command  of  familiar  metres  suggest  Wither,  his 
delightful  poem  "London  Snow"  reminds  one  of  Charles 
Cotton's  famous  quatrains  on  morning,  noon,  and  night, 
though  the  metre  is  different;  and  "On  a  Child  Dead" 
suggests  Lamb's  subtler  poem  addressed  to  an  infant  dead 
as  soon  as  born.  Bridges  has  the  Wordsworthian  fidelity 
if  not  the  Wordsworthian  insight;  he  has  at  times,  though 
not  often,  the  Wordsworthian  triviality,  and  it  is  doubt- 
less as  unwitting  in  him  as  in  his  great  master.  The 
Wordsworthian  triviality,  like  the  INIiltonic  want  of  a 
sense  of  humor,  wiis  in  each  case  the  i)rice  paid  for  a  large 
simi)licity  (jf  nature  that  in  Milton  ignored,  in  Words- 
worth faih'd  to  corrrlate,  the  importance  of  things.  Mr. 
Bridges  has  something  of  this,  just  as  his  estimable  per- 
sonality breathes  in  the  sincerity  and  simplicity  of  his 
lyrical  work.  Some  of  his  i)ocms  seem  so  natural  and  ob- 
vious as  we  read  them  for  the  first  time  that  we  fail  fully 
to  appreciate  their  unquestionable  art.  "The  idle  life 
I  lead,"  "Ye  thrilled  me  once,  yc  mournful  strains,"  "I 


S68  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

made  another  song"  all  are  illustrations  of  this  obvious- 
ness. Here,  for  example,  is  Mr.  Bridges'  simple,  beautiful 
creed : 

I  love  all  beauteous  things, 

I  seek  and  adore  them; 
God  hath  no  better  praise. 
And  man  in  his  hasty  days 

Is  honored  for  them. 

I  too  will  something  make 

And  joy  in  the  making: 
Altho'  to-morrow  it  seem 
Like  the  empty  words  of  a  dream 

Remembered  on  waking. 

And  in  the  lovely  poem,  "Long  are  the  hours  the  sun  is 
above,"  will  be  found  a  delicate  spiritualism  that  fills  out 
with  deeper  diapason  the  poet's  love  of  the  world.  Has 
any  one  thought  of  Mr.  Bridges  as  a  reincarnate  Cam- 
pion? Each  is  deep  in  fealty  to  Apollo  as  the  god  of  po- 
etry and  song,  as  well  as  the  father  of  ^sculapius.  Each 
theorized  on  the  nature  of  metre  and,  with  a  learning 
born  of  a  devoted  love  of  the  ancients,  looked  forward  to 
new  metrical  worlds  to  conquer  only  to  refute  the  whole 
by  facile,  unaffected,  musical  lyrical  poetry  compassed  by 
a  most  orthodox  following  of  the  tradition  of  the  past. 

If  Mr.  Bridges  is  a  Wordsworthian,  possessed  of  some- 
thing of  Campion's  sweet  Elizabethan  singing  voice,  Mr. 
William  Watson  harks  back,  for  his  distinction  of  style,  his 
grand  manner,  and  for  his  preoccupation  with  politics,  to 
Milton,  for  his  abiding  sense  of  propriety  to  Gray  and  the 
eighteenth  century.  Of  the  eighteenth  century,  too,  is  Mr. 


SOME  SUCCESSORS  OF  S^VINBURNE         269 

Watson's  critical  attitude,  his  clarity  of  diction  and  his 
stateliness.  Indeed,  Mr.  Watson's  muse  is  always  more  ele- 
giac than  lyrical.  There  is  nothing  of  its  kind  finer  than 
the  admirable  critical  elegies,  "The  Tomb  of  Burns," 
"Shelley's  Centenary,"  or  "Wordsworth's  Grave." 
Though  dealing,  as  verse  of  universal  regret  must  ever 
deal,  with  the  larger  commonplaces  of  elegiac  emotion, 
we  must  deny  to  these  fine  poems  (as  we  must  deny  to 
most  of  the  poetry  of  Mr.  Watson)  any  marked  distinc- 
tion of  thought.  Nor  can  any  marked  originality  of  sub- 
ject be  posited  for  Mr.  Watson's  poetry.  His  lyrics  are 
often  of  the  occasional  kind,  their  seriousness  alone  tak- 
ing them  out  of  the  category  of  vers  de  societe,  though  not 
always  successfully  lifting  them  to  the  higher  regions  of 
lyrical  art.  When  sustained  by  the  power  of  epigram,  Mr. 
Watson's  shorter  poems  —  "Liberty  Rejected,"  "When 
birds  were  songless  on  the  bough,"  "Under  the  dark 
and  piney  steeps,"  or  "Thy  voice  from  inmost  dream- 
land calls,"  for  example  —  approach  the  delicate  art  of 
Landor.  We  can  hardly  claim  for  Mr.  Watson  any 
greater  love  for  nature  than  that  which  is  the  common 
birthright  of  our  time.  Of  minute  observance  of  her  ways 
there  is  ntjlliing  in  iiini,  and  j)erlia[)s  it  is  only  once,  in 
the  charming  little  lyric,  "The  Lure,"  that  he  so  much 
as  touches,  in  his  uniform  clarity  and  definiteness  of  line, 
the  skirts  of  the  wayward  spirit  of  romantic  beauty. 

More  truly  a  Wordsworiliian  in  his  loving  .'ittrntion  to 
the  flowers  that  grace  his  beloved  Knglish  country-side 
and  the  dumb  aruj  \-o(;il  aninial  life  tlial  tenants  it,  is  Mr. 


270  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

Arthur  Christopher  Benson.  In  some  half  dozen  volumes 
or  more  since  1893,  Mr.  Benson  has  shown  himself  more 
conscious  in  his  literary  style  than  Mr.  Bridges  and  of  a 
sadder  and  more  introspective  muse;  less  critical  than  Mr. 
Watson  and  free  alike  from  his  political  and  satirical  bias, 
Mr.  Benson  is  equally  the  meditative  and  elegiac  poet 
and  pervaded  with  as  strong  a  moral  and  religious  sense. 
So,  too,  Mr.  Laurence  Binyon  is  Wordsworthian  in  the 
power  of  his  descriptive  detail  and  in  his  contemplative 
treatment  of  his  favorite  London  scene  for  material,  al- 
though this  by  no  means  marks  the  limits  of  Mr.  Binyon's 
range  of  poetical  subject.  Wordsworth's  famous  sonnet, 
"On  London  Bridge,"  may  almost  be  said  to  have  been 
the  parent  to  them  all,  these  "London  Visions"  of  Mr. 
Binyon,  the  "London  Voluntaries"  of  Henley,  and  the 
like  poetry,  inspired  by  the  metropolis,  of  Buchanan, 
Davidson,  and  some  others:  "Now  it  is  a  great  dray  roll- 
ing down  the  street,  its  giant  driver  guiding  it  triumph- 
antly; .  .  .  now,  the  great  golden  dome  of  St.  Paul's  loom- 
ing above  the  smoke- wrapped  city;  now  Salvation  Army 
singers,  in  whose  enthusiasm  the  poet  sees  the  reincarna- 
tion of  the  delirious  spirit  of  the  Dionysia's  'mad,  leafy 
revels  at  the  Wine-God's  will';  now  a  quiet  sunset  on 
'full-flooding  Thames.'  Various  lights  illumine  these  city 
scenes  of  Mr.  Binyon's  devices,  but  while  dawnlight  and 
full-moon  and  sunset  color  some,  London  at  night  inspires 
so  many  that  I  have  come  to  think  the  characteristic 
lights  of  the  poems  are  the  flickering  gas  of  street  lamps." 
Contrasting  some  of  these  interesting  choses  vues  of  Lon- 


SOME  SUCCESSORS  OF  SWINBURNE         271 

don,  which  border  none  the  less  on  the  genus  lyric  for  the 
emotion  with  which  their  atmosphere  is  surcharged,  the 
critic  continues:  "Mr.  Binyon  is  most  intent  on  the  pic- 
ture of  his  subject,  where  Henley  is  as  much  interested  in 
the  surge  and  sound  that  accompanies  the  picture  as  in 
the  picture  itself.  Henley,  too,  is  almost  always  the  im- 
pressionist. Robert  Buchanan  cares  much  less  for  mak- 
ing pictures  of  city  life  than  he  does  for  telling  the  life- 
stories  of  \nctims  of  that  life.  Davidson  has  generally  a 
problem  to  propound  as  well  as  a  story  to  suggest  and  a 
picture  to  paint. "^ 

To  return  to  our  "Puritan  line"  —  Spenser,  Milton, 
Gray,  Wordsworth,  Arnold  —  in  Mr.  Stephen  Phillips  we 
have  once  more  the  scholarly  poet,  telling  over  again  in 
elaborated  and  beautiful  verse,  dramatic  and  epic,  the 
lovely  Greek  myths  that  have  been  hallowed  by  centuries 
of  transmitted  culture.  Mr.  Phillips  is  not  primely  original 
in  thought;  but  he  is  a  born  stylist,  limpid  and  dignified 
in  his  often  exquisite  poetical  diction,  and,  for  his  indlvid- 
nul  trait  of  difFcrencc,  "  preoccupied  [to  an  extraordinary 
degree  in  a  j)oet  who  is  neither  mystical  nor  theological] 
with  the  world  beyond  the  grave."  A  quiet  acceptance 
of  the  dead  as  always  present  in  our  lives  is  the  theme  of 
poem  after  i)ocm  of  Mr.  Phillips. ^  In  others  there  is  al- 
most the  Hellenic  vivid  sense  for  the  world,  together  with  a 

'  ('.  Wf-ygandt.  "Tho  F'oclry  of  Mr.  Laiin-nrt-  Binyon,"  Scipunrc 
Review,  July,  1005,  pp.  2Hi-iH^. 

'  Witness  "The  Apparition,"  "  Eurtli  Bouinl,"  "To  a  Lust  Love,"  for 
example. 


272  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

very  un-Hellenic  recognition  of  human  weakness.  Beauti- 
ful and  of  a  dignified  solemnity  are  some  of  the  shorter 
poems  of  Mr.  Phillips.  Equally  a  devotee  of  Greek  beauty 
is  Mr.  T.  Sturge  Moore,  and  equally  happy  in  retelling 
those  golden  tales  of  the  ancients  that  no  repetition  at 
the  hands  of  a  true  poet  can  ever  stale.  Hardly  since  the 
time  of  Keats  have  lines  so  colorful,  so  instinct  with  real- 
ity, been  written  of  that  dim  past;  though  Mr.  Moore  has 
neither  the  music  nor  the  crystalline  clarity  of  Keats,  for 
which  he  substitutes  a  vivid  picturesqueness,  his  inherit- 
ance from  the  pre-Raphaelites.^  The  art  of  Mr.  Moore  is 
at  its  best  in  descriptive  passages  dealing  minutely  with 
details  that  build  up  a  striking  poetical  picture,  and  he 
has  many  a  poetic  grace  that  is  none  the  less  effective 
from  its  Homeric  or  other  classical  origin.  Both  of  these 
poets  are  elegiac  rather  than  strictly  lyrical,  and  few,  if 
any  of  their  professed  poems  of  lyrical  type,  bubble  with 
the  joy  of  song. 

With  Mr.  A.  E.  Housman,  author  of  that  remarkable 
and  original  collection  of  lyrics,  A  Shropshire  Lad,  we 
return  once  more  to  our  Wordsworthians;  and  Mr.  Hous- 
man's  Wordsworthianism  consists  in  a  realization,  often 
as  complete  as  Wordsworth's  at  his  best,  of  the  innate 
poetry  of  common  and  rural  life,  seen  objectively  but  felt 
within.  The  language  of  these  poems  is  so  simple,  the 
thought  so  unadorned,  or  where  adorned  so  natural,  the 

^  See  "Theseus,"  "Medea,"  above  all  the  fine  poetic  drama. 
Aphrodite  against  Artemis,  and  the  lyrics  of  the  volumes  Theseus  and 
The  Gazelles. 


SOME  SUCCESSORS  OF  SWINBURNE         273 

metres  so  usual,  the  subjects  so  universal,  that  we  must 
seek,  if  we  are  to  appreciate  to  the  full  the  consummate 
art  that  underlies  them.  Mr.  Housman  is  no  mere  rural 
singer  like  Burns  or  even  Barnes,  but  a  man  of  culture 
who  has  reincarnated  his  poet's  spirit  in  every -day  Shrop- 
shire life.  An  interesting  contrast  has  been  suggested 
between  A  Shropshire  Lad,  and  Mr.  Hardy's  strange  but 
holding  volume,  Essex  Poems,  the  gatherings-in  of  realistic 
reminiscences  of  early  years,  told  with  the  literary  and 
dramatic  power  that  makes  Mr.  Hardy  one  of  the  great 
novelists,  but  with  an  occasional  awkwardness  and  pre- 
vailing stiffness  that  marks  the  prose-man  working  in 
verse.  Mr.  Housman  has  none  of  this  stiffness,  but  is 
master  of  the  medium  in  which  he  works;  but  he  shares  to 
a  remarkable  degree  Mr.  Hardy's  fatalism,  his  sense  of 
the  oppression  of  reality,  as  he  shares  his  fine  abandon- 
ment to  the  charm  of  sorceress  Nature.  This  is  only  one 
of  the  several  variations  and  changes  of  mood  that  these 
choice  lyrics  portray;  but  the  close  is  characteristic  of  the 
unaffected  and  wistful  melancholy  that  pervades  them, 
whatever  the  theme. 

'T  is  tirao,  I  think,  by  Wcnlock  town 

Tlic  noidcn  broom  slioiild  IjIow; 
Tlur  hawthorn  .sprinkled  \i])  and  down 

Should  charge  the  land  with  snow. 

Spring  will  not  wait  the  loiterer's  time 

Who  ko-ps  so  if)ng  away; 
So  others  wear  the  broom  and  clitnl) 

The  hedgerows  heaped  with  may. 


874  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

Oh  tarnish  late  on  Wenlock  Edge, 

Gold  that  I  never  see; 
Lie  long,  high  snowdrifts  in  the  hedge  , 

That  will  not  shower  on  me. 

Leaving  to  the  anthologies  the  many  lesser  and  estim- 
able Wordsworthians  in  the  variety  of  their  introspection, 
their  meditation,  sonneteering,  and  ceremonious  observ- 
ances before  the  altar  of  their  goddess,  Nature,  let  us  turn 
to  the  two  poets  whose  later  inspiration  in  a  way  links 
on  to  the  pre-Raphaelites  and  the  later  lyrical  poetry  of 
Coventry  Patmore.  It  was  at  the  opening  of  the  year  1894 
that  that  "captain  of  song"  (as  Thompson  called  him  in 
later  beautiful  lines  on  his  portrait)  heralded  to  the  world 
a  new  poet,  Francis  Thompson,  in  a  short  appreciation 
of  admirable  insight;  and  no  less  a  poet  than  Browning 
added,  too,  his  cordial  appreciation.  Thompson  was  of  a 
Roman  Catholic  family  that  went  back  into  the  Mother 
Church  with  the  Oxford  Movement.  He  seems  to  have 
been  a  creature  strangely  incapable  of  taking  care  of 
himself  in  a  work-a-day  world;  and  his  vicissitudes,  as  a 
shoemaker's  assistant,  a  sandwich-man,  a  match-seller  in 
London  streets,  a  very  pariah  among  men,  were  they  actu- 
ally known  or  in  place  for  revelation  here,  would  outrival 
the  uttermost  strangeness  of  biographical  adventure. 
Saved  literally  from  the  street  by  the  friendship  of  Mr. 
and  Mrs.  Meynell  (the  latter  a  writer  of  memorable 
lyrics),  Thompson  passed  the  last  years  of  his  life  in  a 
Sussex  religious  house  in  the  quiet  needful  for  the  devel- 
opment of  his  unique  poetic  genius,  and  ceased  wisely  to 


SOIME  SUCCESSORS  OF  SWTNBURNE         275 

write  when  he  felt,  towards  the  end,  his  poetic  powers  to 
be  failing.  Several  volumes,  Poems,  Sister  Songs,  and 
New  Poems,  followed  the  poet's  immediate  acceptance 
among  the  greater  singers  of  the  late  Victorian  days;  and 
the  earlier  patronizing  terms,  "a  reincarnate  Crashaw," 
"  a  modern  Cowley,"  "  a  rhapsodist  of  incorrigible  fertility 
and  of  as  incorrigible  an  obscurity,"  have  been  followed 
by  a  general  recognition  in  Francis  Thompson  of  a  poet  of 
superb  imagination,  "inexhaustible  opulence,"  a  seer  as 
well  as  a  singer  of  unimpeachable  genius.  Thompson's 
subjects  are  as  diverse  as  they  are  imaginatively  beautiful 
and  happy  in  treatment.  The  seraphic  praise  of  spiritual 
beauty,  an  almost  metaphysical  treatment  of  the  passion 
of  love,  a  hymning  of  the  ineffable  glory  of  dawn  or  of  the 
sinking  of  the  sun  to  rest  in  their  analogies  as  cosmic  phe- 
nomena related  to  universal  life  and  inevitable  death  — 
such  are  some  of  the  extraordinary  themes  of  this  extraor- 
dinary singer.  His  inspiration  is  suffused  with  a  spirit  of 
worship  and  praise  that  transcends  the  ordinary  signifi- 
cance of  the  word  religious  as  his  use  of  scientific  thought 
and  metaphysical  ratiocination  is  consistently  transmuted 
into  vitalized  and  surpassingly  effective  poetry.  No  Eng- 
lish f)oct  except  Donne  has  so  jioetized  metaphysical 
thought:  compare 

She  wears  that  body  but  as  one  indues 
A  robe,  half  careless,  for  it  is  the  use; 
Although  her  .soul  and  it  ho  fair  agree 
We  sure  may,  unattaint  of  heresy, 
Conerit  it  might  the  soul's  begetter  be. 


276  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

with  this  of  Donne: 

One,  whose  clear  body  was  so  pure  and  thin 
Because  it  need  disguise  no  thought  within, 
'T  was  but  a  through-light  scarf  her  mind  t'  enroll 
Or  exhalation  breathed  out  of  her  soul. 

Again,  no  English  poet  except  Crashaw  has  so  transfused 
his  words  in  his  ideas,  his  ideas  in  his  words,  by  means  of 
the  white  heat  of  ecstatic  emotion.  Nor  is  conceit  and  the 
extravagant  metaphor  of  the  Carolan  absent  from  the 
Victorian,  though  often  justified  by  its  supreme  success, 
as  for  example  where  the  creation  of  a  field  flower  is 
described : 

God  took  a  fit  of  Paradise-wind, 

A  strip  of  coerule  weather, 
A  thought  as  simple  as  Himself, 

And  ravelled  them  together. 

With  a  power  over  the  larger  cadences  of  verse  only 
exceeded  by  Shelley  himself,  I  find  in  Francis  Thompson  a 
richer  color,  a  more  esoteric  thought,  dare  it  be  said,  if  less 
melody,  a  more  harmonized  music.  To  begin  quoting 
Thompson  is  to  be  caught  in  the  maze  of  his  exquisite 
imagery;  although  his  large  thought,  fretted  with  recur- 
rent graces,  scarcely  lends  itself  readily  to  fragmentary 
quotations.  His  is  the  command  of  music,  color,  picture, 
and  upbearing  lyric  fire.  He  can  be  subtle  in  psychology 
as  in  the  little  series,  "A  Narrow  Vessel,"  charmingly 
delicate  and  fanciful,  as  in  the  dainty  lines  "To  a  snow 
flake,"  magnificently  daring  as  where  he  cries: 

Look  up,  O  mortals,  and  the  portent  heed; 
In  very  deed. 


SOME  SUCCESSORS  OF  SWINBURNE        277 

Washed  with  new  fire  to  their  irradiant  birth, 
Reintegrated  are  the  heavens  and  earth; 
From  sky  to  sod. 
The  world's  unfolded  blossom  smells  of  God. 

And  he  can  compel  a  great  thought,  at  need,  mto  a  dis- 
tich, as 

Short  arm  needs  man  to  reach  to  Heaven 
So  ready  is  Heaven  to  stoop  to  him. 

While  the  early  discipleship  of  Mr.  Laurence  Housman 
to  the  pre-Raphaelites  is  not  to  be  questioned,  I  can  find 
nothing  of  the  rhapsodist,  of  the  poet  that  spontaneously 
and  ecstatically  sings  in  him;  and  his  contrasts  rather  than 
his  resemblances  to  Francis  Thompson  are  the  most 
striking.'  Thompson  is  religious,  Mr.  Housman  is  theo- 
logical; Thompson's  fervor  is  the  current  on  which  he 
is  borne,  Mr.  Housman 's  fervor  and  sincerity  —  and  it 
would  be  vain  to  deny  him  either  —  seem  fully  in  his 
control,  sometimes  a  little  goaded  to  expression,  eked  out 
and  ingenious.  Mr.  Housman  seems  possessed  of  a  far 
more  genuine  conviction  of  sin  than  is  fashionable  in  our 
current  practical  theologies.  To  him,  after  seventeenth- 
century  ideals,  this  life  is  ;i  prison-house  in  which  the  soul 
is  justly  iiicareeraled,  and  man  is  essentially  vain  and 
worthless.  Sul)inission  to  (iod  is  a  mystery  which  no  man 
can  fathom,  and  ;i  longing  hope  for  annihilation  is  all 
that  remains.  Mr.  Housman  seems  never  really  glad,  his 
in.spiration  is  ever  sombre  and  life  a  tragic  fact.  He  says 
somewhere,  "  Unfortunately  there  arc  to  be  found,  to  sit  in 

'  Sec  Mr.  Housman's  first  volnmf.  (Irrrn  Arrn.'<.  189fl. 


278  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

judgment,  minds  of  a  literal  persuasion  that  take  from  the 
artist  his  own  soul,  to  set  it  in  the  image  that  he  has 
made."  ^  But  who  can  escape  such  a  temptation  where 
the  poetic  attitude  is  so  consistently  maintained.  With 
the  confession  of  an  absolute  inability  to  sympathize  with 
the  sombre,  theological,  hopeless  pose  of  Mr.  Housman, 
let  us  grant  him  the  recognition  due  his  carefully  executed 
verse  and  the  distinction  that  undoubtedly  enables  him 
to  wear  his  Rue  with  a  difference.^ 

Although  the  late  John  Davidson  is  absolutely  removed 
in  his  whole  manner  of  thought  from  these  two  poets  of 
faith,  he  seems  best  described,  like  the  former,  as  a  rhap- 
sodist  in  whom,  however,  force  rules  rather  than  the  sense 
of  beauty.  Davidson  has  been  aptly  dubbed  "a  Scotsman 
of  the  perfervid,  not  the  canny  type":  and  perfervidness 
is  the  quality  that  accounts  for  his  poetic  eloquence  and 
extravagance  of  diction,  his  lapses  of  technique  and  the 
circumstance  that,  in  all  his  ably  written  dramas,  his  witty 
and  poetic  Fleet  Street  Eclogues,  and  his  vigorous  and 
significant  ballads,  there  is  scarcely  to  be  found  one  com- 
pletely successful  lyric.  His  force  often  becomes  violence, 
his  figurative  language  conceit,  his  originality  stridency. 
For  Nature  he  has  a  passion;  and  he  handles  her  like  a 
Goth.  A  thrush  sings  for  Davidson  "like  one  that  sings 
in  Hell";  daisies  are  "the  land-wide  Milky-Way"  and 
elsewhere  "a  snowy  leprosy"  upon  the  land;  a  lily  is  "on 
fire  with  newly  budded  love."    And  Davidson's  poetic 

*  All  Fellows,  preface. 

^  One  of  Mr.  Housman's  books  is  entitled  Spikenard,  another  Rite. 


SOME  SUCCESSORS  OF  S\MNBURNE         279 

theory  is  as  violent  as  the  extremes  of  his  poetry.  "  Poetry 
is  the  will  to  live,  the  will  to  power;  poetry  is  the  empire. 
Poetry  is  life  and  force";  and  rime  is  "a  property  of  de- 
cadence." ^  But  enough;  that  lyricism  should  flourish  in 
such  hands  is  amazing:  to  leave  the  poetry  of  Davidson 
unmentioned  among  his  peers  would  be  unjust. 

From  Thompson  and  other  poets  whose  lives  were 
pervaded  by  the  fervor  of  the  older  faith,  the  transition 
is  best  made  to  the  lyrists  of  the  Neo-Celtic  revival  by 
means  of  the  late  Lionel  Johnson,  an  Englishman  by 
birth,  though  proud  of  his  Irish  blood  and  sympathetic 
with  Ireland's  traditions  and  ideals.  The  range  of  John- 
son's poetry  is  wider  than  that  of  cither  Francis  Thomp- 
son or  Mr.  Ilousraan.  The  religious  note  in  him  is  less 
ungoverned  and  rhapsodic  than  the  former's,  and  freer 
from  the  ecclesiasticisra  and  hopelessness  of  the  latter. 
Johnson  has  the  scholar's  reminiscence  of  his  reading  in 
the  literature  of  his  own  tongue  as  well  as  in  the  classics, 
and  he  translates  his  recollections  into  the  terms  of  genuine 
poetry  in  jjoems  such  as  "Oxford  Nights"  or  "The  Clas- 
sics," and  in  a  way  quite  his  own.  His  is  a  deep  seated 
love  of  place  and  of_  individual  friends,  a  fine  sense  for 
nature  and  an  intellectuality  above  most  of  his  immediate 
fellows.  Johnson's,  too,  is  the  distinction  of  a  fine  poetic 
style,  more  indistinct  than  Watson's,  firmer  sinewed  and 
more  controlled  than  that  of  Francis  Thompson  and  in- 
fused with  a  deei)cr  originality.    There  is  no  hackneyed 

'  [loUilay  nnd  Other  I'ocm.i  with  a  Note  on  I'oilnj,  1900,  j).  1 19. 


280  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

thought  in  lyrics  such  as  "Bagley  Wood,"  "Harmonies," 
"The  Precept  of  Silence,"  or  "Cadgworth": 

My  windows  open  to  the  autumn  night. 

In  vain  I  watch  for  sleep  to  visit  me: 

How  should  sleep  dull  mine  ears,  or  dim  my  sight. 

Who  saw  the  stars,  and  listened  to  the  sea? 

Ah,  how  the  City  of  our  God  is  fair! 

If,  without  sea,  and  starless  though  it  be. 

For  joy  of  the  majestic  beauty  there. 

Men  shall  not  miss  the  stars,  nor  mourn  the  sea. 

And  now  a  word  as  to  the  lyrical  poetry  of  the  Celtic 
revival,  concerning  which  if  the  present  writer  exhibit  a 
somewhat  unorthodox  attitude,  the  total  lack  of  anything 
Celtic  in  his  blood  may  be  pleaded  in  extenuation  if  not  in 
excuse.  As  some  have  written,  it  might  be  thought  that 
there  had  been  no  imagination  or  poetry  in  England  had 
it  not  been  for  the  spirit  of  the  Celt,  that  the  supernatural, 
the  spiritual,  the  ideal,  the  romantic,  all  were  evolved  by 
the  Celt  and  existent  in  the  proportion  in  which  Celtic 
blood  had  intermingled  to  enrich  the  sluggish  Saxon  stream. 
When  it  is  recalled,  however,  that,  save  for  a  few  of  the 
remotest  corners  of  the  British  Isles  (which  corners,  by 
the  way,  have  not  produced  any  great  poetry),  the  entire 
realm  is  populated  by  a  mixed  race,  and  when  it  is  fur- 
ther recalled  that  Spenser,  Shakespeare,  Coleridge,  Shel- 
ley, and  Keats,  in  none  of  whom  the  Celtic  strain  can  be 
proved  to  be  predominant,  each  and  all  possessed  these 
"Celtic"  traits  of  imagination,  ideality,  romanticism,  and 
supernaturalism  to  a  high  degree,  the  ineptitude  of  refer- 


SOME  SUCCESSORS  OF  SWINBURNE         281 

ring  all  these  things  to  one  source  is  too  patent  to  require 
further  discussion.  In  our  concern  with  the  lyric  written 
in  the  English  tongue  we  have  disregarded  for  the  most 
part  geographical  boundaries,  at  least  those  of  Great 
Britain.  It  is  impossible  not  to  remember  Burns  and 
Hogg  as  Scotchmen;  we  need  not  emphasize  that  circum- 
stance with  Stevenson  or  Thomson.  Goldsmith  and  Emily 
Bronte  were  both  Irish:  which  of  us  remembers  the  last 
as  an  Irishwoman  until  we  find  her  claimed  for  admirable 
poetry,  not  distinctively  Irish,  in  a  book  of  "Irish  verse"? 
In  short,  as  in  the  case  of  poetry  written  in  America  by 
those  born  elsewhere  than  in  any  of  the  British  Isles, 
there  is  a  danger  of  making  too  much  of  these  geograph- 
ical divisions.  None  the  less,  as  we  have  already  seen, 
there  is  a  Celtic  revival  which  embraces  the  literary  activi- 
ties of  natives  of  Scotland,  Ireland,  and  Wales;  and  the 
most  active  as  well  as  the  most  distinctively  national 
phase  of  that  revival  is  the  Irish  literary  movement.  To 
the  last  let  us  turn  our  attention,  reoaliiiig  that  we  must 
leave  out  of  consideration  its  very  material  contributions 
to  imaginative  prose  and  to  the  drama  wherein  it  is  un- 
questionably the  most  distinguislied. 

In  a  very  attractive  little  volume  entitled  A  Book  of 
Irish  Verse  Selected  from  Modern  Writers,  Mr.  Yeats  has 
collected  together  what  liis  fine  poclic  taste  considers 
best  in  the  fjoctry  of  his  coiiiit ryiiieii  from  Oliver  (jold- 
siiiitli  to  Lionel  Jolinson  and  Miss  Dora  Si^crson.  Sheri- 
dan, Moore,  Darley  and  Mangan,  Ferguson,  de  Vcre, 
Davis  and  Allingham,  all  in  their  differing  degrees,  with 


282  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

some  others  belong  to  the  past,  and  have  received  such 
attention  in  this  book  as  a  sense  of  proportion  can  allow 
them.  To  that  past,  too,  belongs  Edward  Walsh,  the  se- 
lections from  whose  poetry  in  Mr.  Yeats's  volume  show 
a  ready  adapter  of  Irish  song  to  English  verse  with  an 
effective  employment  of  sonorous  Irish  proper  names,  es- 
pecially by  way  of  refrain.  Two  other  poets  of  the  volume, 
each  yet  alive  and  equally  beholden  to  the  wealth  of  the 
literary'  and  traditional  literature  of  their  favored  coun- 
try, are  Mr.  Thomas  William  Rolleston  and  Dr.  Douglas 
Hyde,  who  have  been  so  active  in  the  forward  movement 
of  Irish  literary  thought. '  Some  of  these  artistic  English 
versions  labelled  "from  the  Irish"  —  "Were  you  on  the 
mountain,"  "Thy  grief  on  the  sea,"  or  "I  shall  not  die 
for  thee,"  all  by  Dr.  Hyde  —  are  charming;  and,  in  the 
absence  of  definite  information  on  the  subject,  one  won- 
ders how  much  is  really  "old  Irish"  and  how  much  is  due 
to  the  cultivated  literary  thought  of  the  modern  poet  and 
his  fine  command  of  the  tongue  of  his  Sassenach  enemy. 
Mr.  Yeats  is  unquestionably  the  head  and  front  of  the 
contemporary  Celtic  movement  in  literature.  We  like 
and  honor  him  for  his  theories  and  ideals  as  we  acclaim 
him  and  admire  him  for  his  beautiful  poetry,  narrative, 
dramatic,  and  lyrical.  The  inspiration  and  fascination  of 
a  primitive  race,  simple,  noble,  brave  beyond  the  heroes, 
imaginative  above  the  poets,  mysteriously  half-suggested 

*  Mr.  Rolleston  is  editor  with  Mr.  A.  Stopford  Brooke,  the  well-known 
critic,  who  is  also  an  Irishman  and  a  poet,  of  A  Treasury  of  Irish  Poetry 
in  the  English  Tongue,  1905,  an  admirable  work. 


SOME  SUCCESSORS  OF  SWINBURNE         283 

in  the  fragmentary  literature  that  has  come  down  to  us, 
all  this  is  patent  to  the  reader  of  Mr.  Yeats;  and  it  is 
equally  patent  that  the  Irish  poet  is  heir  as  well  to  an 
unlrish  inlicritance,  his  limpid  English  diction,  his  com- 
mand of  English  metres  and  music  in  words,  his  mastery 
of  many  an  image  and  many  a  noble  thought  which  has 
come  to  him  by  right  of  his  poetic  inheritance  and  by 
way  of  the  long  and  august  line  of  English  poets  that  has 
preceded  him.  The  pre-Raphaelite  affinities  of  Mr.  Yeats 
are  not  to  be  disputed,  specific  definiteness  in  the  midst  of 
visionary  indefiniteness  —  "the  red  rose  upon  the  rood  of 
Time,"  "The  nine  bean  rows"  of  Innisfree,  "the  white 
feet  of  angels  seven."  His  sense  of  color,  which  is  quite  his 
own,  is  yet  often  as  conventionalized  as  Rossetti's:  "the 
blue  star  of  twilight,"  "the  leopard  colored  trees,"  "a 
green  drop  in  the  surge,"  "the  curd-pale  moon  ";  the  heart 
of  Fergus  is  a  "small  slate-colored  thing,"  and  "white" 
are  the  birds  of  death.  In  lyrics  such  as  "The  Cloak, 
the  Boat  and  the  Shoes,"  "A  Dream  of  a  Blessed  Spirit," 
especially  in  "Ephemera"  (too  long  to  quote  here),  is  to 
be  found  the  new,  strange  note  of  tiiis  best  of  the  Irish 
singers.  There  is  a  sense  of  unreality  about  Mr.  Yeats 's 
poetic  treatment  of  this  visible  world  that  extends  to  his 
imaginative  treatment  of  the  other  world  as  well: 

For  the  elemental  beings  go 

Alxiul  my  taljlc  to  iind  fro. 

In  flood  and  fire  and  clay  and  wind 

They  luiddic  from  man's  pondering  mind; 

Yet  he  who  treads  in  austere  ways 

May  surely  meet  their  ancient  gaze. 


S84  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

Man  ever  journeys  on  with  them 
After  the  red-rose-bordered  hem. 
Ah,  faeries,  dancing  under  the  moon 
A  Druid  land,  a  Druid  tune! 

It  is,  after  all,  the  delicate  modern  craftsman's  use  of  this 
delightful  old  material  of  a  perished  age.  We  shall  not 
ask  Mr.  Yeats  if  he  believes  in  the  charming  supernatural- 
ism  that  he  practises  so  well  (in  his  plays,  The  Land  of 
Heart's  Desire  or  in  The  Countess  Cathleen,  for  example), 
or  if  his  tone  of  fatalistic  otherworldliness  is  "old  Irish  "or 
modern  Maeterlinckian. 

Another  leader  of  the  Neo-Celtic  poetry  in  Ireland  is 
"A.  E.,"  that  is,  Mr.  George  William  Russell,  who  has 
been  described  as  "The  Irish  Emerson,"  a  sobriquet  far 
from  unhappy  considering  his  transcendental  ideals,  his 
mysticism,  his  "poetry  of  cold  ecstasy,"  and  on  the  other 
hand  his  eminent  practicality  as  a  man.  Mr.  Russell  is 
poet,  painter,  dramatist,  organizer  of  an  agricultural  soci- 
ety, editor  and  inspirer  of  much  in  the  forward  move- 
ment, literary  and  economic,  of  his  country.  Poetry  is  to 
him  no  mere  art,  the  expression  of  beauty;  it  is  rather  a 
species  of  enthusiasm  by  means  of  which  the  poet  is  up- 
lifted into  a  closer  communion  with  the  universal  spirit, 
by  means  of  which,  to  employ  the  Emersonian  phrase, 
"the  soul  returns  to  the  Over-soul."  ^  Twilight  in  sunrise 
or  more  particularly  falling  into  sunset,  the  effects  of  light 
in  darkness  and  dreamland  with  the  massing  glories  of  the 
evening  and  midnight  skies  —  these  more  commonly  than 

'  C.  Weygandt,  in  Sewanee  Review,  April,  1907. 


SOME  SUCCESSORS  OF  SAMNBURNE         285 

the  phenomena  of  terrestrial  nature,  offer  "A.  E."  the 
materials  of  his  art.  "A.  E."  loves  to  hark  back  to  the 
glories  of  remote  ages,  Babylon,  Egypt,  legendary  Ire- 
land, to  feel  that  at  times  we  may  attain  the  detachment, 
the  abstractness  of  "our  ancestral  selves."  His  is  a  vivid 
sense  of  the  immensity  of  time  and  its  unity,  of  the  rein- 
carnation of  the  past  in  the  present;  and  his  noble  poetry, 
which  is  unEmersonian  in  its  consummate  technique  and 
uniform  excellence,  is  preoccupied  almost  to  the  degree 
of  sameness  with  "the  calm  and  proud  procession  of 
eternal  things." 

There  is  not  among  the  poets  of  The  Book  of  Irish  Verse 
or  elsewhere  an  Irish  lyrist  who  ranks  with  these  —  John- 
son, Yeats,  Russell;  though  there  are  charming  and  in- 
teresting poems  by  Charles  Weekes,  who  shares  somewhat 
the  mysticism  of  Mr.  Russell,  "John  Eglinton"  and  the 
several  distinguished  Irishwomen,  INIiss  Dora  Sigcrson 
(^Irs.  Shorter),  IVIrs.  Katherinc  Tynan  Ilinkson,  Miss 
Moira  O'Neill,  Miss  Nora  Hopper  (Mrs.  Chesson),  and 
Miss  Carberry  (now  Mrs.  McManus),  who  have  made 
their  country' 's  lore  and  sentiment  lyrically  tuneful. 
There  remains  one  name  that  links  on  here  logically  with 
these  poets  who  are  Celtic  and  so  largely  mystic.  In  lOO.'i 
occurred  the  death  of  William  Sliarp,  the  friend  and  bio- 
graj)li('r  of  Rossetti,  long  known  lo  I  he  world  as  one  wliose 
somewhat  slender  promise  in  poetry  had  been  superseded 
by  a  fuller  aclii(!venient  in  criticism.  With  the  dfiilli  of 
Mr.  Sharp  came  the  disclosure,  long  suspected,  that  he 
was  really  the  author  of  the  interesting  work  in  verse 


286  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

and  prose  which  had  been  appearing  for  some  years  under 
the  name  of  "Fiona  Macleod."  ^  The  lyrical  verse  of 
"Fiona  Macleod"  is  possessed  of  an  unmistakable  charm; 
"hers"  (shall  we  say?)  are  the  graces  of  simplicity  and 
melody,  haunting  at  times.  Here,  too,  is  the  Celtic  mys- 
tery and  melancholy  which,  while  in  no  wise  insincere, 
does  not  strike  the  reader  as  so  deep  and  essential  as  it  is 
merely  artistic.  William  Sharp  as  a  poet  would  scarcely 
have  been  without  Rossetti;  his  poetical  reincarnation  as 
"Fiona  Macleod"  would  have  been  impossible  but  for 
Irish  neo-romanticism. 

From  the  otherworld  and  the  world  that  has  been,  we 
turn  to  the  world  that  is  with  Mr.  Kipling  and  "  the  poets 
of  empire."  Mr.  Kipling  has  worried  the  critics,  who  find 
him  unauthentic  in  his  art  and  declare  his  language  jour- 
nalese. And  Mr.  Kipling  has  retorted  with  spirit  and  un- 
mistakable import  as  to  art  and  as  to  the  limits  thereof.  In 
his  verse  and  prose  he  shares  the  experience  of  several  of 
the  greatest  of  English  writers  in  that  he  is  untraditional, 
unconventional,  unbound  by  the  petty  by-laws  of  what  we 
may  term  literary  drawing-room  manners.  Shakespeare, 
Defoe,  Dickens,  each  was  equally  unauthentic  in  his  time, 
and  each  was  equally  contemporaneous  and  successful. 
Mr.  Kipling  takes  the  current  talk  of  the  street,  the  gun- 
room, the  smoking-room  on  liner  or  transcontinental  rail- 
road, and  infuses  into  it  a  melody  of  words,  a  pointedness 
of  expression  sustained  by  a  sentiment  or  emotion  gener- 

^  See  the  admirable  memoir  of  her  husband,  compiled  by  Mrs.  Sharp 
and  published  in  1910. 


SOME  SUCCESSORS  OF  S^\TS'BURNE         2S7 

ally  accepted:  and  produces  poetry  as  the  result.  His 
heroes  are  men  who  do  and  dare;  his  horizon  extends  over 
the  superficies  of  the  globe  and  faces  strange  lands  and 
strange  faces;  but  his  ideas  are  circumscribed  by  the  preju- 
dices and  the  generosities  of  his  English  blood.  Mr.  Kip- 
ling is  not  alone  in  his  realism,  his  vigor,  his  patriotism,  or 
his  employment  of  verse  for  the  conveyance  of  contemp- 
orary political  comment.  This  last  descended  from  Milton 
to  Tennyson,  Buchanan,  and  Watson,  to  name  only  these. 
War  poetry  is  one  of  England's  lyrical  birthrights  from 
Michael  Drayton  to  this  our  own  "era  of  peace."  Nor  was 
Mr.  Kipling  either  the  first  to  give  us  the  poetry  of  the 
barrack-room  and  that  fine  recognition  of  the  worth  of 
even  a  heathen  foeman:  witness  some  of  the  stirring 
poems  of  Sir  Francis  Hastings  Doyle.  Mr.  Kipling's  dis- 
tinction —  as  often  pointed  out  —  is  his  grasj)  of  the 
great  idea  of  empire,  of  expansion,  of  the  essential  unity 
of  the  Anglo-Saxon  race,  the  greatness,  the  glory,  the 
heroic  mission  of  whirh  to  sul)jiigate  the  world  is  with  him 
alike  a  religion  and  an  obsession.  Lyrically  Mr.  Kipling 
is  abundantly  successful  and  that,  too,  with  material  that 
daintier  poets  might  hesitate  to  emj)Ioy.  His  instrument 
is  the  military  band  in  which  the  wind  of  brass  and  of 
wood  sounds  out,  bravely  emphasized  with  instruments 
of  percussion.  None  the  less,  it  is  astonishing  what  ten- 
derness and  sweetness  he  at  times  achieves  in  his  masterly 
use  of  the  material  at  hand.  The  cockney  Tommy  Atkins, 
the  tramp  whaler,  the  renegade  and  nc'er-do-well  knock- 
ing about  the  globe  (to  say  nolliing  of  his  Oriental  figures) 


288  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

find  their  glorification  in  Kipling,  and  the  sentiments  of 
their  universal  humanity  raise  his  verses  again  and  again 
into  the  regions  of  poetry.  In  the  patriotic  verse  of  Henry 
Newbolt  the  present  writer  feels  a  decided  drop.  Mr. 
Newbolt  is  contained  in  a  corner  of  Mr.  Kipling's  lordly 
domain,  and  his  song,  save  for  a  few  poems  latterly,  is 
comprehended  in  a  fervent  love  of  England  and  her  heroes 
and  in  praises  of  her  naval  prestige.  Unlike  his  master, 
although  a  fluent  verseman  Mr.  Newbolt  is  rarely  mu- 
sical; only  the  refrain  of  "  The  Fighting  Temeraire  "  in  his 
earliest  volume,  Admirals  All,  really  haunts  the  memory. 
Mr.  Alfred  Noyes,  too,  is  "a  poet  of  empire";  and  in  one 
fine  lyric  at  least,  "The  Island  Hawk,  a  song  for  the 
launching  of  his  majesty's  aerial  navy,"  he  has  extended 
England's  primacy  of  the  sea  to  the  dominion  of  the  air. 
But  Mr.  Noyes  is  many  other  things  in  poetry  besides,  — 
a  disciple  of  Buchanan  and  the  lyrists  of  London  streets, 
in  the  dramatic  and  humanitarian  touch  of  such  poems 
as  "In  a  Railway  Carriage"  or  "An  East  End  Coffee 
House";  of  Meredith,  perhaps,  in  his  fanciful,  and  at 
times  imaginative,  poetry  of  nature.^  With  Mr.  John 
Masefield  we  return  to  the  more  accepted  limits  of 
the  "poets  of  empire."  There  is  atmosphere  about  his 
"Spanish  Waters,"  as  about  his  bits  of  English  land- 
scape, and  he  holds  lands  not  in  fief  to  the  principality 
of  Kipling.  As  to  the  rest,  who  hector  with  Buchanan 
or  strut  after  Kipling,  their  name  is  legion  and  their  fame 
is  negligible.  The  one  great  fact  for  England  is  the  sea, 
*  See  especially  the  charming  poem,  "The  Rock  Pool." 


SOiVIE  SUCCESSORS  OF  SWINBURNE         289 

and  he  would  be  but  a  poor  Briton  in  these  our  late  facile 
times  who  could  not  turn  "a  song  of  empire"  and  admon- 
ish England  of  her  greatness,  of  her  burden,  or  of  her 
forgetfulness. 

Lastly  of  this  grouping  there  is  Mr.  Arthur  Symons  and 
his  fellow-worshipper  at  the  shrine  of  Aphrodite,  the  late 
Ernest  Dowson,  to  name  in  this  most  ancient  cult  of  the 
poets  only  the  foremost  of  her  ever-continuous  host  of 
devotees.  Mr.  Symons  has  told  effectively  of  the  shy  and 
vagabond  life  of  Dowson,  and  edited  his  poetry  with  the 
affectionate  regard  born  of  a  kinship  of  tastes.^  By  some 
Dowson  has  been  esteemed  the  superior  poet;  he  is  assur- 
edly less  the  conscious  man  of  letters,  and  scarcely  a  line 
of  his  slender  volume  is  without  its  interest.  Mr.  Symons 
is  a  distinguished  critic  and  a  poet  of  an  intense  and  ver- 
itable gift,  however  he  has  elected  to  limit  the  range  of  his 
melody.  Clearly  Mr.  Symons  caught  the  torch  of  his  erotic 
song  at  the  altars  which  Swinburne  lighted  to  the  same 
great  goddess,  but  he  has  not  followed  his  master  into 
the  fanes  of  other  deities  and  liis  music  is  less  dithyrambic 
and  diverse.  Of  late  the  critics  have  much  employed  the 
term  "decadent,"  to  aj)ply  or  misapply  to  any  trait  or 
idiosyncrasy  which  the  |)arli(iilar  critic  of  the  moment 
may  happen  to  (lislikc  in  tiic  jxkI  of  his  particular  men- 
t  ion.  In  the  accepted  sense,  decay  is  the  antithesis  of  life; 
it  is  the  fate  of  th(^  bud  to  open  and  of  the  full  blown  flower 
to  fall.  In  another  sense,  dissolution  and  the  signs  of 
dissolution  are  as  much  a  process  of  nature  as  birth  and 
'    The  I'ocmit  of  Erncsl  Dnw.ion,  I'orlliind,  Maine,  1892. 


290  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

the  evidences  of  growth.  That  a  poet  should  be  dubbed  a 
poet  of  decadence  because  of  his  preoccupation  with  man's 
passion  for  woman  seems  absurd.  In  the  intensity  of  its 
earthiness,  in  its  inconstancy,  and  in  the  despair  and  re- 
gret that  the  contemplation  of  the  ashes  of  desire  leave 
always  in  him  who  has  burned  in  the  flame,  human  passion 
is  in  itself  no  more  degenerate  than  any  other  preoccupa- 
tion in  literature,  that  for  example  of  the  satirist  or  of  the 
hymnist  who  finds,  in  every  work  of  God,  the  symbolic 
figuration  of  the  ceremonials  of  his  individual  cult.  How- 
ever, it  is  not  to  be  denied  that  in  Mr.  Symons  and,  to  a 
lesser  degree,  in  Dowson,  there  is  a  neurotic  note,  unlike 
the  cynicism  and  flippancy  of  the  Carolan  lyrists  and  the 
sentimentality  that  followed  in  later  generations.  The 
ecstasies,  the  raptures  of  love,  the  fatalism  with  which  its 
brevity  and  its  haunting  memories  are  met,  the  acknow- 
ledgement of  passion's  imperious  mastery  —  these  are 
decadent  notes :  notes  that  seem  those  only  of  singers  that 
have  made  "pleasure"  the  end  of  life  and,  joying  in  it  to 
the  full,  have  known  to  the  full  its  vanity.  In  poems  such 
as  "The  Chimsera"  (a  remarkable  piece)  and  "The Dogs," 
in  lyrics,  often  poetically  exquisite,  such  as  the  collection 
"  Bianca,"  in  single  poems,  "Morbidezza,"  "  Stella  Maris," 
or  "Leves  Amores,"  will  be  found  the  unmistakably  "de- 
cadent" note  that  Mr.  Symons  has  caught  with  some 
other  features  of  his  delicate  and  seductive  art  from  such 
men  as  Baudelaire  and  Verlaine. 

Mr.  Archer's  valuable  volume,  Poets  of  the  Younger  Gen- 
eration, now  ten  years  old,  includes  twenty-three  names. 


SOME  SUCCESSORS  OF  S^^^NBURNE         291 

A  dozen  have  received  our  attention;  eight  others  are 
American  and  fall  not  therefore  within  the  scheme  of  this 
book.  Four  more,  Mr.  Trench,  author  of  Deirdre  Wed, 
Mrs.  Hinkson,  Miss  Hopper  (Mrs.  Chesson),  and  Miss 
Sigerson  (Mrs.  Shorter)  belong  more  or  less  closely  to  the 
"Irish  movement."  The  rest,  Mr.  Le  Gallicnne,  Mr. 
Money-Coutts,  and  Sir  Arthur  Quiller-Couch  among  them, 
each  deserves  critical  attention,  and  should  have  it  here 
did  the  plan  of  this  book  permit  so  close  a  scrutiny  of  our 
contemporary  poetry.  To  differentiate,  too,  the  sincere, 
capable,  and  often  beautiful  poetry  of  the  eight  women  of 
British  birlh  whose  names  appear  in  Mr.  Archer's  list  of 
honor,  would  be  equally  worth  while,  but  disproportion- 
ate. Mrs.  Meynell,  for  example,  is  distinguished  among 
poets  of  her  sex  for  her  mastery  of  form  and  her  distinc- 
tion of  manner,  Mrs.  Woods  for  her  intellectuality.  Mrs. 
Radford  is  a  very  genuine  lyrist  whose  verses  sound  with  a 
note  unrepetitious  of  others'  songs;  and  as  might  be  ex- 
pected, in  the  j)octs  of  Irish  birth  we  reach  mostfrc(iuently 
that  weird  and  wistful  sorrow  —  though  less  often  the 
magic  —  that  criticism  associates  with  the  Celt.  As  to 
the  many  new  aspirants  for  i)oetic  fame  who  press  upon 
the  contemporary  critic  their  various  claims  for  immedi- 
ate recognition,  we  are  too  near  as  yet  to  do  them  justice 
and  would  rather  err  in  a  knowing  silence  than  by  false 
acclaim. 

In  this  our  study  of  the  English  lyric,  we  have  been  dis-     L 
traught  with  many  considerations.    I'or  Ihc  lyric  in  one 


292  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

age  was  not  the  lyric  of  all,  and  our  point  of  view  has 
necessarily  shifted  with  the  changing  procession  of  time. 
Two  elements,  however,  remain  permanent  to  distinguish 
the  lyric  from  other  kinds  of  poetry:  that  which  makes 
the  lyric  an  expression  of  the  world  within,  and  secondly, 
the  element  of  song.  In  Anglo-Saxon  times  we  find  the 
lyric  as  yet  in  solution,  and  unseparated  from  imagin- 
ative elements  of  other  kinds.  The  spirit  of  the  age 
was  serious  and  gloomy,  abashed  before  the  mysterious 
powers  of  nature,  sensible  of  the  littleness  of  man;  and 
the  tone  of  its  inward  spirit  was  elegiac,  a  tone,  be  it  re- 
membered, that  has  remained  the  essential  ground-note 
of  English  poetry  to  our  present  day.  With  the  trouvere 
came  gaiety,  song,  and  lyrical  form,  though  we  are  never 
to  forget  the  foundations  of  the  music  of  poetry  in  the 
rhythm  of  the  folk  and  the  enormous  contribution,  could 
we  but  know  its  limits  and  nature,  of  the  ballad  to  early 
lyrical  song.  Mediaeval  song  was  alike  the  folk's,  the 
minstrel's,  and  the  dignified  possession  of  the  church. 
And  the  lines  that  divided  each  from  each  were  often 
ill  defined.  None  the  less  English  lyrical  poetry  from 
the  earliest  mediaeval  times  has  about  it  the  conscious- 
ness of  art,  a  matter  determinable  from  its  elaborate 
and  varied  form  and  from  the  completeness  with  which 
it  approaches  the  motives  and  conventions  of  French 
lyrical  poetry.  The  mediceval  lyrist,  were  he  clerk, 
monk,  or  minstrel,  remained  for  the  most  part  anony- 
mous, and  the  great  names  in  the  poetry  of  the  four- 
teenth  and  fifteenth   centuries,  even  Chaucer's  among 


CONCLUSION  293 

them,  are  not  such  for  their  contributions  to  the  lyrical 
art. 

In  Dunbar  and  Skelton  we  reach  for  the  first  time  in 
the  lyric  a  modern  tone,  howsoever  each  was  allied  in 
habit  of  thought  and  in  practice  of  poetry  with  the  medi- 
£Eval  past.  Both  the  Scottish  James  IV  and  Henry  VIII 
were  immensely  interested  in  poetry,  but  it  was  in  the 
court  of  the  latter  that  new  influences  from  the  Continent 
came  to  revolutionize  English  lyrical  poetry  in  particular 
and  to  introduce  in  full  power  that  subjective  and  indi- 
vidual note  in  the  impetus  of  which  we  are  still  living. 
The  difference  between  the  song  of  the  minstrel  or  the 
fervid  Mariolatry  of  the  mediaeval  hymn  and  our  lyrics  of 
to-day  is  a  diflerence  in  kind;  the  difference  between  the 
songs  and  sonnets  of  Wyatt  or  Surrey  and  the  love  poetry 
of  to-day  is  merely  a  difference  in  degree.  With  Wyatt,  the 
influence  of  Petrarch  came  into  the  language,  substitut- 
ing a  Platonized  cult  of  conventionalized  passion  for  the 
earlier  and  equally  conventionalized  lyrics  of  idealized 
courtship,  the  poetical  staple  of  troubadour  and  trouvcre, 
but  often  spiritualizing  and  cniiobliiig  that  cult  in  the 
very  prcK*ess  that  made  it  again  and  again  the  spontaneous 
outf)ouring  of  an  individual  Ininian  fjassion.  It  matters 
less  than  nothing  wlu-tlier  Sidney  loved  Stella  or  not, 
whether  Shakespeare  unlocked  his  heart  in  the  sonnets, 
or  Si)cnser  married  the  lady  whom  he  courted  so  Jibso- 
lulely  in  accord  with  the  canons  of  IVtrarchan  art.  What 
docs  matter  is  that  in  the  sijlcndid  Ixxly  of  Elizabethan 
sonnets  an«l  in  I  In- .songs,  pastoral,  incidental  Id  the  drama. 


294  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

written  to  be  set  to  music,  sacred  and  profane,  we  have 
as  sincere,  as  spontaneous,  as  artistic,  and  as  musical  an 
outburst  of  lyrical  poetry  as  any  nation  or  time  can  boast. 
In  view  of  this  we  may  grant  that  the  Elizabethan  lyric 
is  unequal,  that  it  is  more  an  art  of  great  impact  than  of 
sustained  effect,  that  there  were  a  few  in  this  prodigious 
chorus  of  sweet  sound  that  could  not  sing  and  would  not 
be  silent.  But  in  large,  never  has  the  gift  of  song  been  so 
widely  diffused,  so  lavishly  displayed,  so  crowned  with 
definite  artistic  success.  Only  a  few  of  our  later  lyrists 
can  stand  the  test  of  juxtaposition  beside  the  best  lyrical 
poetry  of  Breton,  Daniel,  Drummond,  or  Campion,  not 
to  mention  the  greater  names.  The  things  that  the  Eliz- 
abethans set  out  to  do,  they  did  incomparably  well ; 
nor  can  we  claim  with  all  our  diversity  a  greater  pro- 
fundity for  more  recent  song,  in  view  of  the  depth  of 
thought,  the  wealth  of  imagination,  and  the  fullness 
of  significance  that  characterizes,  now  and  again,  the 
lyrical  poetry  of  Greville,  Shakespeare,  Jonson,  and 
Donne. 

Neither  does  the  lyric  in  the  days  of  King  James  and 
King  Charles  fall  much  inferior;  for  some  of  the  greater 
earlier  names  continue  into  the  reign  of  the  first  to  be 
succeeded  by  lesser  though  still  potent  voices.  There  is  a 
richness  of  color  and  a  choice  perfection  of  form  about 
many  of  the  lyrics  of  the  Stuart  days  that  go  far  to  com- 
pensate for  the  loss  of  something  of  the  spontaneous 
freshness  of  Elizabeth's  time.  It  is  difficult  to  subscribe 
to  a  recent  opinion  that  belittles  Herrick  to  a  place  below 


1 


CONCLUSION  295 

Waller,  and  falls  into  diatribes  as  to  the  petty  subjects  ^ 
of  that  delightful  poet's  delicate  art.^  Among  the  lyrists 
it  is  not  always  by  their  philosophy  of  life  that  ye  shall 
know  them,  and  we  could  ill  spare  Herrick,  Carew,  or 
Suckling,  were  our  gam  only  among  the   deeps  of  the 
understanding.  A  feature  of  Carolan  times  in  the  history 
of  poetry  was  the  rise  of  the  devotional  lyric  in  the  hands 
of  Herbert,  Crashaw,  and  Vaughan,  to  a  union  of  the  ^ 
choicest  devotional  fervor  with  a  competent  poetic  art.  \ 
These  names  stand  to-day  unparalleled  in  the  history  of  i 
the  English  religious  lyric,  however  an  occasional  poem  ( 
may  rise  to  a  place  beside  their  best  endeavors.  In  Milton, 
the  joyous  spirit  of  Renaissance  poetry  passed  into  the 
shadow  of  Puritanism  and  in  so  doing  gained  in  nobil- 
ity, in  artistic  purpose  and  restraint  far  more  than  it 
lost.    Milton's  cla-ssicism  came  pure  from  the  inspiring 
font  of  IIii)pocrene  ;  the  classicism  of  Urj'den  was  of  a  j 
less  authentic  source,  and  was  rather  a  classicism  of  \ 
reaction. 

Whatever  our  definitions  of  those  abused  words  it  is 
best  to  recognize  always  that  "classicism  and  romanti- 
cism are  tendencies  rather  than  opposed  methods  of  art. 
Liteniture  has  always  partaken  of  both,  although  one 
may  dominate  in  one  age,  the  other  in  another."  -   In  the 

*  P.  Y..  More,  in  an  article  on  Herrick,  The  Nation,  Octoin-r, 
1912. 

*  See  the  presc-nt  writer's  "Hen  .lonson  ami  llie  ('lassiea!  Scliool," 
PiMicatidJi.i  of  llir  Modern  Ldmiudiir  As.iocitilion  of  Amrrira,  xill, 
1898;  and  the  helpful  definitions  of  W.  A.  Sr\\simj:.t.scnti(Usof  I'oelnj, 
1912,  p.  13, 


296  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

seventeenth  century  the  fertile  and  ready  Elizabethan 
imagination  which  had  made  the  age  of  Shakespeare  glori- 
ous, degenerated  at  times  into  ingenuity,  extravagance, 
and  fantasticality,  and  the  concettists  practised  a  species 
of  perverted  Petrarchism  that  became  an  abomination 
to  all  men  of  common  sense.  It  was  because  of  this  that 
the  classical  taste  of  Ben  Jonson,  a  force  counter  to  the 
romanticists  of  his  time,  made  headway  to  lead,  in  a  suc- 
cession of  very  definite  steps,  through  Waller  and  Dryden 
to  the  restrictive  "classical"  poetry  of  the  days  of  Pope. 
,  In  this  rationalizing  process  the  lyric  nearly  expired,  for 
I  i*the  lyric  is  dependent  more  than  any  other  form  of  poetry 
i  on  the  exercise  of  the  imagination,  or  at  least  on  the  incen- 
1  tive  of  her  lively  foster-sister,  the  fancy.   It  was  for  this 
I  teason,  despite  the  noble  sonnets  of  Milton,  that  the  idea 
of  a  lyric  degenerated  in  the  days  of  Dryden  into  a  poem 
of  gallantry  or,  at  best,  a  product  of  sentimentality  ;  and 
it  continued  to  languish  in  an  atmosphere  of  indulgent 
,   contempt  until  an  imaginative  conception  of  man  and  the 
r  world  reasserted  itself  with  the  revival  of  the  romantic 
temper. 

That  that  revival,  beginning  with  Blake  and  Chatterton, 
should  have  been  manifold  was  in  the  nature  of  things. 
For  the  new  romanticism  flowered  in  the  glorified  folk- 
poetry  of  Burns,  in  Byron's  reincarnation  of  the  spirit  of 
revolt,  and  in  Shelley's  impracticable  idealist's  passion 
for  reforming  mankind ;  in  a  new  unveiling  of  earth  in  her 
perennial  beauty,  that  was  Keats;  and  in  a  revelation  of 
the  divine  significance  of  that  beauty  to  man>  that  was 


I 


CONCLUSION  297 

Wordsworth.  It  is  impossible  here  to  recapitulate  the 
many  notes  in  that  Renaissance  of  wonder,  that  spread 
from  the  supernaturalism  of  Coleridge  to  the  artistic 
medisevalism  of  Tennyson,  and  to  that  interesting  con- 
ventionalized realization  of  strange  beauty  which  we  de- 
signate pre-Raphaelitism,  Among  Victorian  poets  the 
lyric  conformed  ever  more  and  more  to  the  complexities, 
the  doubts,  and  the  aspirations  of  our  intricate  modern 
life,  opening  a  hundred  new  channels  for  the  expression  T 
of  human  emotion  and  keeping  pace  in  the  variety  of  its 
form  and  mood  with  an  age  the  essence  of  which  was  its 
eclecticism.  It  is  no  wonder  that  we  pause  before  some 
new  province,  reduced  to  the  dominion  of  poetry,  and 
question  the  authenticity,  as  some  did  with  Browning, 
of  an  art  so  novel  and  unsupported  with  the  buttresses 
of  precedent.  With  Wordsworth  holding  far  over  into 
the  reign,  with  the  Tennysonian  artistry,  with  Browning's 
wealth  of  significance,  and  with  the  incomparable  music 
and  technical  virtuosity  of  Swinburne  all  considered, 
Victoria's  reign  was  an  extraordinary  time  for  poetry, 
and  the  essence  of  that  poetry,  here  as  elsewhere,  was 
lyrical.  The  Oxford  Movement  was  less  fraught  with 
meaning  to  the  development  of  poetry  than  to  the  his- 
tory of  human  thought ;  but  if  we  associate  Newman's 
return  to  a  more  [)rimitive  form  of  Christianity  with  the 
return  of  Rossetti  and  his  followers  to  the  canons  of  an 
equally  primitive  art,  and  recall  the  im|)ortant  reaction 
in  which  was  l)cgotten  Arnold's  poetry  of  doubt,  the 
Oxford  Movement  alsc^  assumes  imi)ortance  as  affecting 


298  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

certain  modes  of  lyrical  poetry.  With  the  latter  years 
of  Victoria  came  the  poetry  of  empire,  the  logical  con- 
tinuance of  a  variety  of  the  art  of  individual  expression, 
almost  as  old  as  the  language,  although  only  latterly, 
since  Tennyson,  prevailingly  lyrical.  While  lastly,  there 
remains  also  with  us  the  insistent  poetry  of  the  Celtic 
revival,  youngest  of  the  daughters  of  romance,  a  trifle 
forward  at  times  and  of  no  such  mysterious  ancestry, 
when  all  has  been  said,  as  she  would  mystify  us  into 
believing. 

It  is  a  commonplace  of  the  latest  review  of  the  latest 
volume  of  verse,  whether  English  or  American,  to  deplore 
the  decay  of  poetry  among  us  and  to  ask :  "  Now  Teimyson 
is  gone  and  Browning,  Swinburne  and  Meredith  too,  what 
more  is  there  ever  for  us  to  hope  for  in  poetry?"  Yet 
among  English  speaking  nations,  never  before  has  poetry 
been  more  generally  read  or  more  prevalently  printed  in 
the  magazines  of  the  moment  and  in  new  volumes,  court- 
ing more  permanent  preservation.  This  diffusion  of  an 
interest  in  poetry  has  bettered  the  technique  of  our  versi- 
fiers, while  keeping  their  art  more  or  less  along  the  beaten 
path  of  accepted  standards.  It  has  made  poetry  popu- 
lar, if  it  has  lowered  somewhat  our  literary  standards. 
Whether  our  greater  English  poets  are  more  admired 
than  read  is  a  recurrent  academic  question.  Perhaps,  if 
they  were  more  carefully  pondered,  fewer  would  attempt 
with  easy  conscience  their  difficult  art.  As  it  is,  nearly 
everybody  now  writes  verses  (they  are  almost  as  com- 
mon as  short  stories) ;  and  what  is  more,  nearly  everybody 


CONCLUSION  299 

prints  them.  The  lyrical  address  to  flower,  beast,  sunset,] 
or  season,  each  of  these  things  vocal  and  solicitous  to 
teach  unhappy  man  some  fine  lesson  or  other,  the  senti- 
mental or  humorous  poem  of  childliood,  the  tender  lyric 
of  regret  for  a  fair  maid  who  died  young  or  married  the 
market-gardener  —  who  does  not  know  these  things  and, 
recognizing  them,  read  anything  else?  Even  worse  than 
these  is  the  solemn  injunction  as  to  the  white  man's  duty 
to  go  out  somewhere  and  civilize  some  one  of  a  darker 
complexion  at  the  point  of  a  gun,  or  the  inspired  vision, 
prayer,  or  what  not  that  ought  to  be  forbidden,  like  pro- 
fanity, for  its  incessant  calling  on  the  name  of  God  in  vain. 
These  things  nearly  any  one  can  turn  out  now  in  con- 
temj)orary  England,  or  in  contemporary  America,  Canada, 
or  Australia  for  that  matter,  in  facile  rime  and  with  a 
requisite  precision  as  to  the  number  of  syllables:  and  in 
some  places  our  taste  has  not  sufficiently  progressed  for 
the  majority  of  us  to  prefer  silence.  None  the  less,  with 
the  work  of  the  poets  enumerated  in  this  chaj)lor  before 
us  —  to  say  nothing  here  of  that  wide  outer  empire  of 
song  that  so  far  exceeds  the  limits  of  English  jwlitical 
dominion  —  despair  as  l<>  llic  future  of  poetry  in  the  Eng- 
lish tongue  is  i)r<'posl(T()Us.  Our  |)()etry,  like  our  religion, 
is  apt  to  adjust  itself  but  slowly  to  the  changes  in  our 
social  and  i)olitical  conditions.  Art  must  ever  follow  afler 
nature,  and  in  the  race  art  runs,  like  religion  once  more, 
in  the  gj'ves  of  precedent  and  conv^cntion.  Our  very  rebels 
in  poetry  turn  a  half-averted  face  backward  to  the  past 
of  Greece,  the  Renaissance,  and  llicir  own  England,  and 


300  THE  ENGLISH  LYRIC 

carry  with  them  an  ever-lengthening  chain  that  binds 
them  to  the  precious  literary  traditions  of  the  race.  Thus 
it  is  that  that  past  becomes  a  warranty  of  the  future  of 
our  art;  and  the  art  of  the  lyrist  remains,  like  the  gods, 
ever  young  and  never  dying. 


I 


THE   END 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


/-' 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The  following  list  of  books  includes  some  of  the  more  import- 
ant works  that  treat  specifically  of  the  lyric,  or  of  the  English 
lyric  in  general  and  in  specific  periods.  Anthologies  of  English 
poetry,  which  cunnnonly  contain  critical  matter,  are  grouped 
correspondingly.  Fur  further  bil>liographical  information  and 
esp)ecially  for  the  bibliographies  of  individual  poets,  the  reader 
b  referred  to  the  works  constituting  the  first  group  of  the  fol- 
lowing list. 

A.  BlBLIOGRAI'niES  ASD  WoUKS    CONTAINING   BIBLIOGRAPHIES 

OF  THE  Lyric 

^      Carpenter,  F.  I.,  Outline  Guide  to  the  Studi/  of   English  Lyric 

Poetry,  Chicago,   1897.     (A  helpful   bibliography  up  to  its 

date.) 
Chambers,  E.  K.,  and  Sidgwick,  F.,  Early  English  Lyrics,  Anwr- 

OU.1,  Divine,  Moral,  and  Trivial,  1907.    (Contains  a  valuabl«« 

bibliogra[>liy  of  MS.  and    i)riiitcd  sources,  and  critical  nia- 

tfriai.) 
Erskinc,  J.,  The  Elizabethan  Lyric,  1903.    (Ccjlumbia  University 

Thesis;  contains  an  excellent  bibliography.) 
Gayley,  C.  M.,  and  Scott,  F.  N.,  An  Introduction  to  the  Methods 

and  Materials  of  Literary  Criticisin,   1899.    (Contains  much 

matter  incidentally  touching  tlie  lyric.) 
Mile.H,  A.  II.,  The  Poets  and  the  Poetry  of  the  Century,  I'i  vols., 

n.    d.     (Contains   much    valuable   bibliographical    material, 

llidugli  unsystetnaf i<-ally  arranged.) 
Morliy.  II.,  English  W'rilcr.i,  1887-189.">,  11  vols.  (Contains  goml 

bibliographies  up  to  tli<'  time  of  King  James.) 


304  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Reed,  E.  B.,  English  Lyrical  Poetry  from  its  Origins  to  the  Present 
Time,  1912.  (Contains  a  useful  bibliography,  especially  of  the 
earlier  periods.) 

Ward,  A.  W.,  and  Waller,  A.  R.,  The  Cambridge  History  of  Eng- 
lish Literature,  Cambridge,  1907  — ,  9  vols,  to  date.  (Import- 
ant alike  for  the  text  and  the  valuable  bibliographies.) 

B.  1.  Works  in  which  the  Lyric  is  treated  at  Large  fob 
ITS  Form,  its  Nature,  or  its  Place  in  Literature 

■  Alden,  R.  M.,  An  Introduction  to  Poetry,  N.  Y.,  1909.    (An 
exceedingly  useful  compendium.) 
'■'    Benard,  C,  La  Poetique  par  W.  F.  Hegel,  Paris,  1855. 
.>   Bradley,  A.  C,  Oxford  Lectures  on  Poetry,  1909. 
>^'  Brooke,  S.  A.,  Theology  in  the  English  Poets,  1874. 

Brunetiere,  F.,  LEvolution  de  la  PoSsie  Lyrique,  Paris,  1895. 
>-'  Brunetiere,  F.,    Victor  Hugo,  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes,  April 

15,  1902.    (A  discussion  of  the  lyric  is  involved.) 
~  Coleridge,  S.  T.,  Biographia  Literaria,  1817. 
vf'  Combarieu,  J.,  Les  Rapports  de  la  Mxisique  et  de  la  Poesie,  Paris, 

1894. 
/  Corson,  H.,  A  Primer  of  English  Verse,  Boston,  1893. 

Courthope,  W.  J.,  A  History  of  English  Poetry,  1895-1910, 6  vols. 

Dallas,  E.  S.,  The  Gay  Science,  1866. 

Gayley,  C.  M.,  and  Young,  C.  C,  The  Principles  and  Progress 

of  English  Poetry,  1904. 
Gildersleeve,  B.  L.,  ed.  Pirular,  1885.  (Introduction  on  the  Ode.) 
Guest,  E.,  History   of   English  Rhythms,  1882.    (Now  largely 
superseded,  first  published  in  1838.) 
/     Gummere,  F.  B.,  The  Beginnings  of  Poetry,  1901.    (A  learned, 
full,  and  scholarly  discussion  of  a  difficult  subject.) 
Gummere,  F.  B.,  A  Handbook  of   Poetics,  Boston,  1885.    (A 

valuable  compendium.) 
Gummere,  F.  B.,  Originality  and  Convention  in  Literature,  Quar- 
terly Review,  Jan.,  1906, 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  305 

Gurney,  E.,  The  Potcer  of  Sound,  1880.  (An  important  discussion 
of  the  relations  of  music  to  poetry.) 
/^  Hazlitt,  W.,  Lectures  on  the  English  Poets,  1819. 
y<<  Hegel,  G.  W.   F.,  .Esthetik,  in  Werlce,  vol.  x,  Berlin,  1833-48. 
(The  part  concerning  the  lyric  has  been  well  translated  by 
Benard,  q.  v.  above.) 
X^  Henderson,  T.  F.,  Scottish  Vernacular  Literature,  1900. 
^  Hepple,  N.,  Lyrical  Forms  in  English,  Cambridge,  1911. 
y^  Hood,  T.,  Practical  Guide  to  English  Versification,  otherwise  The 
Rhymester,  ed.  by  "Artliur  Penn"  [Brander  Matthews],  N.  Y., 
188^2. 
•■    Jacobowski,  L.,  Die  Anfdnge  der  Poesie,  1891.  (A  clever  and  per- 
verse attempt  to  prove  the  priority  of  the  Lyric  over  other 
kinds  of  poetry.) 
Jusserand,  J.  J.,  Ilistoire  LiU6raire  du  Pcwple  Anglais,  Paris, 
1895-1904,  2  vols.   English  translation,  1895. 
<^     Kastner,  L.  E.,  Thomas  Lodge  as  an  Imitator  of  the  Italian  Poets, 
Modern  Language  Review,  ii,  190G-07. 
•Lanier,  S.,  The  Science  of  English  Verse,  1890. 
y  Lewis,  C.  M.,  The  Principles  of  English  Verse,  1906. 

Mill,  J.  S.,  Poetry  and  its  Varieties,  in  "Dissertations  and  Dis- 
quisitions," ed.  188iJ. 
Murray,  (iilbert,  ll'hat  English  Poetry  may  ham  from  the  Greek, 
Atlantic   Montldy,   Se|)t..   l!H'-2;   rrprinled    in    "Essays   and 
Studies  by  Members  (ifTlie  English  Association,"  1912. 
Mus<\s  Library, TIk'.  (Conlains  llie  following  |)oels,  with  intro- 
ductions and  other  critical  niati-rial:  Care?/;,  by  A.  Vincent, 
1899;  Gay,  by  J.  Ilnderhill.  1893;  Coleridge,  by  R.  Garnett, 
1898;   Vaughan,  by  E.  K.  Chambers,  I89(i;  llrrrick,  by  A. 
Pollard.  1891;  Marnell,  by  (J.  A.'Ailkcn,  1892;  Wither,  by  F. 
Sidgwick,  1902;  Donne,  by  H.  K.  Cliambers,  1890;  Keats,  by 
R.  Bridg«>H,  1890.) 
x^NeiLson.  W.  A..  Essential  (f  I'ortry.  Ilosloii.  1912. 
Patmorc,  C,  Po<-ms,  vol.  ii,  1897.    (Preface  on  Ode.) 


30G  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

^    Pattison,  M.,  Essay  on  the  Sonnet,  in  his  ed.  of  "Milton's  Son- 
nets," 1888. 
Poe,  E.  A.,  The  Poetic  Principle  and  The  Rationale  of  Verse, 
"Poc's  Works,"  ed.  E.  C.  Stedman  and  G.  E.  Woodberry, 
Chicago,  1895,  vol.  vi. 
'■'Robertson,  J.  M.,  Essays  Towards  a  Critical  Method,  1889. 
^^  Saintsbury,  G.,  A  History  of  English  Prosody  from  the  Twelfth 
Century  to  the  Present  Day,  1906-10,  3  vols.    Historical  Man- 
ual of  English  Prosody,  1910.    (Tliese  are  far  from  satisfac- 
tory in  the  treatment  of  earlier  English  verse.) 
■     Scherer,  W.,  Poetik  (an  Essay  edited  by  R.  M.  Meyer),  Berlin, 
1888. 
Scliipper,  J.,  Englisehe  Metrik,  Bonn,  1881-88.    (An  excellent 

and  authoritative  work.) 
Schipper,  J.,  Grundriss  der  englischen  Metrik,  Vienna  and  Leip- 
sig,  1895.   English  Translation,  History  of  English  Versifica- 
tion, Oxford,  1910. 
Shairp,  J.  C,  Aspects  of  Poetry,  1882. 
Stedman,  E.  C,  The  Nature  and  Elements  of  Poetry,  1892. 
Ten  Brink,  B.,  Geschichte  der  englischen  Litteratur,  Berlin,  1893. 
^  Tomlinson,  C,  The  Sonnet:  its  Origin,  Structure^  and  Place  in 

Poetry,  1874. 
^  Veitch,  J.,  The  Feeling  for  Nature  in  Scottish  Poetry,  Edinburgh, 

2  vols.,  1887. 
^  Walker,  H.,  Three  Centuries  of  Scottish  Literature,  1893,  2  vols. 
^/^Walkley,  A.  B.,  War  and  Poetry,  Edinburgh   Review,  July, 

1902. 
^  Warton,  J.,  History  of  English  Poetry,  from  the  Tivelfth  to  the 
close  of  the  Sixteenth  Century,  ed.  W.  C.  Hazlitt,  1871,  4  vols. 
z-'      Watts-Dunton,  T.,  Poetry,  Encyclopaedia  Britannica,  ed.  1885. 
Watts-Dunton,  T.,  Tfw  Renascence  of  Wonder  in  Poetry,  Cham- 
bers' Cyclopaedia  of  English  Literature,  1904,  vol.  ill. 
Werner,  R.  M.,  Lyric  und  Lyriker,  Hamburg  and  Leipzig,  1890. 
(A  rather  disappointing  work.) 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  307 

Woodberry,  G.  E„  The  Appreciation  of  Literature,  1907.    (Espe- 
>*    daily  the  chapter  on  "Lyrical  Poetry.") 
"^^  Woodberry,  G.  E.,  Makers  of  Literature,  1900. 

■^    B.  2.  General  Anthologies  of  English  Lyhical  Poetry 

Anon.,  The  Songs  of  Scotland,  chronologically  arranged,  Glasgow, 

1871.    (With  a  good  introduction.) 
Arber,  E.,  British  Anthologies,  1899-1901, 10  vols.,  from  Dunbar 

to  Cowper. 
Bramley,  H.  R.,  and  Stanier,  J.,  Christinas  Carols  New  and  Old, 

1871. 
Bullen,  A.  H.,  Carols  and  Poems  from  the  Fifteenth  Century  to  the 

Present  Time,  1885. 
Caine,  T.  H.,  Sonnets  of  Three  Centuries,  1882. 
Chalmers,  A.,  T^  Works  of  the  English  Poets,  1810,  21  vols. 

(The  repository  of  much  remembered,  and  more  forgotten 

poetry.) 
Chambers,  R.,  Songs  of  Scotland  Prior  to  Burns,  1862.   (With  a 

go()<l  iiitnxluction.) 
Chapix,'!!,  W.,  A  Collection  of  National  English  Airs,  1838-40. 
,  Collins,  J.  C,  A  Treasury  of  Minor  British  Poetry,  189G. 
•/Gossc,  E.,  English  Odes,  with  an  introduction,  1881. 

GnjHart,  A.  B.,  'J'he  various  scries  and   private  publications  of 

this  iii(lcfafif^'al)Ic  ivhtor  coubiin  the  works  of  many  of  the 

earlier  jxx-ts  mentioned  in  this  voIuuk;,  with  prefatory  com- 
ment on  (uich,  usually  entitled  "Memorial  Introduction." 
Henley,  W.   E.,  English  Lyrics,  Chaucer   to   Poe,   ISJ^O-lSJtO, 

1897. 
Hunt.  L..  and  \a^\  S.  A.,  77^;  Uoolc  (f  the  Sonnet,  Boston  ed.  18(»7, 

2  vols.    (IntnxhK-tion  on"Tiie  Sonnet:  its  Origin,  Structure, 

and  I'lju-e  in  PiH'try.") 
Jolinsoti,  S.,  T/ir  U'orhs  of  the  Poets  of  Creat  Britain  and  Ireland, 

Willi  pn-faf.-s  by,  1800,  8  vols, 
l.ioyd,  M.,  Eligir.i  Aiicicnl  mid  Modern,  Trent. m.  1!)(K5. 


308  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Locker-Lampson,  F.,  Lyra  Elegantiarum,  a  Collection  of  some  of 

the  best  Social  and  Occasional  Verse,  enlarged  ed.  by  C.  Kern- 

ahan,  1891.   (First  published,  1867;  an  invaluable  collection 

of  its  species.) 
MacDonald,  G.,  England's  Antiphon,  18G6. 
Main,  D.  M.,  A  Treasury  of  English  Sonnets,  1881. 
Palgrave,  F.  T.,  The  Golden    Treasury,  Selected  from  the  Best 

Songs  and  Lyrical  Poems  in  the  English  Language,  1882. 
Palgrave,  F.  T.,  The  Treasury  of  Sacred  Song,  selected  from  the 

English  Lyrical  Poetry  of  Four  Centuries,  1889. 
Quiller-Couch,  A.  T.,  English  Sonnets,  1910.   (With  a  valuable 

introduction.) 
Quiller-Couch,  A.  T.,  The  Oxford  Book  of  English  Verse,  1250- 

1000,  1908. 
Shiple\%  O.,  Carmina  Mariana,  1894-1902,  2  vols. 
Waddington,  S.,  EngUsh  Stxnnets  by  Poets  of  the  Past,  1888. 
Ward,  T.  H.,  English  Poets,  1885,  4  vols.  (The  prefatory  matter 

to  each  poet,  by  various  hands,  in  this  popular  work,  still 

remains  of  great  value.) 

C.  1.  Works    treating    the    Anglo-Saxon    and    Middle 
English  Lyric 

Aust,   J.,   Beitrdge  zur   Gcschichte    der  mittelenglischen  Lyrik, 

"Archiv,"  lxx,  1883. 
Brandl,  A.,  Gcschichte  der  altenglischen  Literatur,  Strassburg, 

1908. 
Burton,  R.,  Nature  in  Old  English  Poetry,  Atlantic  Monthly, 

April,  1894. 
Chambers,  E.  K.,  The  Mediceval  Stage,  1903,  2  vols.    (Contains 

much  of  value  on  the  lyric  and  folk-lyric  of  the  time.) 
Chambers,  E.  K.,  Some  Aspects  of  the  Mediaeval  Lyric.  Appended, 

with  a  valuable  list  of  books  and  notes,  to  "Early  English 

Lyrics,"  1907. 
Crowest,  F.  J.,  The  Story  of  the  Carol,  1911. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  309 

Gummere,  F.  B.,  The  Popular  Balled,  Boston,  1907.  "Types  of 

English  Literature." 
Heider,  O.,  Untersuchungen  zur  mittelenglisclien  erotischen  Lyrik 

(1250-1300),  Halle  Dissertation,  1905. 
Jusserand,  J.  J.,  English  Wayfaring  Life  in  the  Middle  Ages, 

1890.    (Contains  valuable  information  on  the  minstrel  and 

wandering  cleric.) 
Neilson,  W.  A.,  Origins  and  Sources  of  the  Court  of  Love,  1900. 
Paris,    G.,   La    Littcrature   Franqaise   au   Moyen  Age,   Paris, 

1890. 
Paris,  G.,  La  poesie  au  Moyen  Age,  2d  Series,  Paris,  1895. 
Patterson,  F.  A.,  Tlie  Middle  English  Penitential  Lyric,  Colum-  (^'^' 

bia  Thesis,  1911. 
Paul,  H.,  Grundriss  der  germaniscfien  Philologie,  Strassburg, 

1889.  (Conbiins  matter  on  the  form  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  lyric 

by  Ten  Brink.) 
Schii)pcr,  J.,  Dunbar,  sein  Lchen  und  seine  Gcdichte,  188-i. 
Sharj),  C.  J.,  English  FoUc-Carob,  1911. 
Smith,  J.  IL,  Tfie  Troubadours  at  Home,  1899. 

C.  2.  Collections  of  Anglo-Saxon  and  Middle  Engush 
Lyrical  Poetky 

Bofldeker.  K..  Altenglischc  Dichtungen  dcs  MS.  Ilarl.  2253, 
B«Tliri,  1878.  (A  representative  collection  of  Middle  English 
lyrical  texts.) 

Chambers.  E.  K.,  and  Sidgwick,  F.,  Early  English  Lyrics,  1907. 
(Sf-c  urnler  tiir  first  division  of  this  list.) 

Chap[M'll,  W.,  An  Account  of  an  Unpublished  Collection  of  Songs 
and  Ballads  by  Henry  VIII  and  his  Contemporaries,  Archic- 
ologia,  XLi,  part  ii,  18(j7.    (See  Fliigel.  in  Anglia,  xii.) 

Cook,  .\.  S..  and  Tinker,  C.  B.,  Select  Translations  from  Old  Eng- 
lish Poetry,  Boston,  M)()i. 

Ellis,  (J.,  Specimens  of  the  Early  English  I'oeLs,  first  cd.  1790, 
3  vols. 


310  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Fehr,   B.,  Die  Lieder  der  MS.  Add.  5665,  Herrig's   Archiv, 

cvi,  1901;  sec  also  ibid.,  cvii,  and  cix. 
Fitzgibbon,  H.  M.,  Early  English  Poetry,  London,  n.  d. 
Fliigel,    E.,    Englische    Weinachtdieder   aus   einer  Ilandschrift 

dcs  Balliol  College  zu  Oxford.   In  Forschungen  zur  deutschen 

Philologie,  Festgabe  fur  Rudolf  Hildebran.d,  1894. 
Fliigel,  E.,  Lieder sammlungen  des  XVI.  Jahrhunderts,  hesonders 

aus  der  Zeit  Heinrich   VIII,  Anglia,  xii,  1889,  and  xxvi, 

1903. 
Furnivall,  F.  J.,  Hymns  to  the  Virgin  and  Christ,  E.  E.  T.  S.,  1867. 
Furnivall,  F.  J.,  Political,  Religious,  and  Love  Poems,  E.  E.  T.  S., 

XV,  1866. 
Grein,  C.  W.  M.,  and  Wlilker,  R.  P.,  Bibliothekder  Angelsdchsis- 

chen  Poesie,  Leipsig,  1894,  first  publislied  in  1857-58,  2  vols., 

glossary,  2  vols.,  1861-64.  (This  collection  contains  practically 

the  whole  body  of  Anglo-Saxon  verse.     New  ed.  by  R.  P. 

Walker,  2  vols.,  Kassel,  1883,  Leipsig,  1894.) 
Hazlitt,  W.  C,  Remains  of  Early  Popular  Poetry,  1856,  4  vols. 
Horstmann,  K.,  and  Furnivall,  F.  J.,  Minor  Poems  of  tlie  Vernon 

MS.,  E.  E.  T.  S.,  xcviii,  1892. 
Maitland,  J.  A.  F.,   English  Carols  of  the  Fifteenth   Century, 

1891. 
Morris,  R.,  An  Old  English  Miscellany,  E.  E.  T.  S.,  xux,  1872. 
Morris,  R.,  and  Skeat,  W.  W.,  Specimens  of  Early  English, 

Oxford,  1898. 
Padclford,  F.  M.,  Early  Sixteenth  Century  Lyrics,  Boston,  1907. 

(A  collection  of  the  poetry  of  the  "courtly  makers"  of  Henry 

VIII's  time.) 
Pancoast,  H.  S.,  and  Spaeth,  J.  D.,  Early  English  Poems,  1911. 
Paris,  G.,  Chansons  du  XVe  Steele,  Societe  des  Anciens  Textes 

Frangais,  1875.   (Texts.) 
Reed,  E.  B.,  The  Sixteenth  Century  Lyrics  of  Add.  MS.  18752, 

Anglia,  xxxiir,  1910. 
Rimbault,  F.,  A  Little  Book  of  Songs  and  Ballads,  1851. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  311 

Ritson,  J.,  Ancient  Songs  and  Ballads,  from  the  Reign  of  Henry  II 

to  the  Resolution,  3d  ed.,  1877. 
Ritson,  J.,  A  Select  Collection  of  English  Songs,  1783. 
Todd,  G.  E.,  Mediaeval  Scottish  Poetry,  Glasgow,  1892. 
Wright,  T.,  Songs  and  Ballads,  1860. 
Wright,  T.,  Songs  and  Carols,  1842  and  1856,  2  vols. 
Wright,  T.,  Songs  and  Carols  of  the  XV.  Century,  Percy  Society, 

XXIII,  1847. 
Wright,  T.,  Specimens  of  Lyric  Poetry,  Percy  Society,  iv,  1842. 

D.  1.  Works  treating  of  Lyrical  Poetry  in  Tudor  and 
Stuart  Times 

Alscher,  R.,  Sir  Thomas  Wyatt  und  seine  Stcllung  in  der  Ent-  ■/ 

wickelungsgeschichte  der  englischen  Litteratur  und  Verskunst, 

1886. 
Anon.,  The  Elizabethan  Lyric,  Quarterly  Review,  Oct.,  1902. 
Bapst,  E.,  Deux  Gentilshommes-Poetes  de  la  Cour  de  Henry  VIII, 

Paris,  1891. 
Beeching,  H.  C,    The  Sonnets  of  Shakespeare,   Boston,    1904.  •^ 

(With  intnjdnction.) 
Carpenter,  F.  L,  Thomas  Watson  s  Italian  Madrigals  Englished,  *^ 

1'jOO,  Journal  of  (iernianic  Philology,  ii,  1898. 
Chaijpcll,  \\'.,  Old  English  Popular  Music,  new  ed.  by  IL  S. 

Wooidridgc,  1893,  2  vols.    (First  published  1855-59.) 
Erskini;,  J.,  The  Elizabethan  Lyric,  Columbia  Thesis,  1903,    (See 

under  Hibliograjjliies.) 
Fehse,    II.,   Henry   Howard,   Earl   of  Surrey,   ein   Beitrag  zur  ^ 

Gcschichte  dcs  I'etrarchismus  in  England,  1883. 
Fletcher,  J.  B.,  The  Religion  of  Beauty  in  Women,  1911. 
Grc-g,  W.  W.,  Pastoral  Poetry  and  Pastoral  Drama,  1900.    (A 

valuable;  and  aulliDrifafivc  work.) 
Hannah,  J.,  The  Poems  of  Sir  Walter  Raleigh  viih  those  of  Sir     ^ 

Henry  Wotton  and  other  Courtly  I'ocls,  uv.w  ed.,  1892.   (Con- 

tains  valuabh;  prcfafory  mailer.) 


312  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

/  \f  Hoelper,  F.,  Die  englische  Schriftsprache  in  "  TotteVs  Miscel- 
lany,'' Strassburg,  1894. 
I  •  Imclmann,  R.,  Zur  Kenntnis  der  vor -Shakes pearischen  Lyrik, 
Wynkyn  de  Wordes  "  Song  Booke,"  1530 ;  Sammlung  der 
Lieder  Thomas  Wythornes,  1571.  In  Shakespeare  Jahrbuch, 
XXXIX,  1903. 
Koeppel,  E.,  Studien  zur  Geschichte  des  englischen  Petrarchismus, 

Romanische  Forschungcn,  v,  1887. 
Leutzner,  C,    Uber  das  Sonett  und    seine    Gestaltung  in  der 

englischen  Dichtung  bis  Milton,  Halle,  188C. 
Lee,  S.  L.,  The  French  Renaissance  in  England,  1910. 
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Masson,  D.,  Life  and   Times  of  Milton,   1859-1880,   6  vols. 
(Contains    a  valuable  account   of   the    poetry  of  the   pe- 
riod.) 
Melton,  W.  F.,  The  RJietoric  of  John  Donne's  Verse,  Baltimore, 

190G. 
Moorman,  F.  W.,  Robert  Herrick,  a  Biographical  and  Critical 

Study,  1910. 
Moorman,  F.  W.,  William  Browne;  and  tJw  Pastoral  Poetry  of  the 
Elizabethan  Age,  Strassburg,  1897. 
/  -r      Mott,  L.  F.,  TJie  System  of  Courtly  Love,  Boston,  1896. 
L- 1       Oliphant,  T.,  A  Short  Account  of  Madrigals,  1836. 
I       Owen,  D.  E.,  Relations  of  the  Elizabethayi  Sojinet  Sequences  to 
Earlier  English  Verse,  especially  that  of  Chaucer,  Pennsylvania 
Thesis  (privately  printed),  1903. 
Palmer,  G.  H.,  The   Works  of  George  Herbert,  Boston,   1905. 

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Price,  T.  R.,  The  Technic  of  Shakspere's  Sonnets,  "Studies  in 

Honor  of  Basil  Gildersleeve,"  Baltimore,  1902, 
Saintsbury,  G.,  History  of  Elizabethan  Literature,  1890. 
Schelling,  F.  E.,  English  Literature  during  the  Lifetime  of  Shake- 
/       spear  e,  1910. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  313 

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1891. 
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Symonds,  J.  A.,  A  Comparison   of  Elizabethan  and  Victorian 

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Symonds,  J.  A.,  The  Dantesque  and  Platonic  Ideals  of  Love,  1890. 

^         Symonds,  J.  A.,  Lyrics  from  Elizabethan  Song-Books,  in  "In  the 

Key  of  Blue,  and  Other  Prose  Essays,"  1893. 

Tappan,  E.  M.,  The  Poetry  of  Niclwlas  Breton,  Publications  of 

the  Modern  Language  ^Association,  xiii,  1898. 
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Anson,  W.  S.  W.,  Elizabethan  Lyrics,  1905. 

Arber,  E.,  Tfie  English  Gamer,  1877-9G,  8  vols.  (Sec  a  rearrange- 

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ArlKT,  E.,  English  Ilcprints,  contains  "Tottel's  Miscellany," 
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field,  1882. 


1^ 


314  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

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Bullen,  A.  H.,  Davison's  Poetical  Rhapsody,  1890,  2  vols.  (All 
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Bullen,  A.  H.,  England's  Helicon,  a  Collection  of  Lyrical  and 
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/ 


/ 


316  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Gosse,  E.,  Eighteenth  Century  Literature,  London,  1889. 

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Gosse,  E.,  The  Jacobean  Poets,  1894. 

Gosse,  E.,  Seventeenth  Century  Studies,  1883. 

Hutchinson,  F.  E.,  The  Sacred  Poets,  "Cambridge  History  of 
English  Literature,"  vol.  vii,  1911. 

Moorman,  F.  W.,  The  Cavalier  Lyrists,  "Cambridge  History  of 
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Nichols,  J.,  Literary  Anecdotes  of  tfie  Eighteenth  Century,  1812- 
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Omond,  T.  S.,  English  Metrists  in  the  Eighteenth  and  Nineteenth 
Centuries,  1907. 

Perry,  T.  S.,  English  Literature  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,  1883. 

Phelps,  W.  L.,  The  Beginnings  of  the  English  Itomantic  Move- 
ment, 1893. 

Reynolds,  M.,  Poems  of  Anne  Finch,  Countess  of  Winchilsea, 
Chicago,  1903. 

Reynolds,  M.,  Treatment  of  Nature  in  English  Poetry  from  Pope 
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Schelling,  F.  E.,  Ben  Jonson  and  the  Classical  School,  "Publica- 
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Shenstone,  W.,  Essay  on  Elegy,  "Chalmers'  English  Poets,"  vol. 

XIII. 

Thackeray,  W.  M.,  Tlie  English  Humorists  of  the  Eighteenth 
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Young,  E.,  Discourse  on  Odes,  1725. 

E.  2.  Collections  of  Lyrical  Poetry  from  the  Restora- 
tion TO  the  Rise  of  the  Romantic  School 

Bullen,  A.  IL,  Mu^a  Proterva,  Love-Poems  of  the  Restoration 
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BIBLIOGRAPHY  317 

Dircks,  W.  H.,  Cavalier  and  Courtier  Lyrists,  an  Anthology  of 

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Pearch,  G.,  A  Collection  of  Poems,  consisting  of  Valuable  Pieces 

not  inserted  in  Mr.  Dodsley' s  Collection  or  publisJicd  since,  1775, 

4  vols. 

F.  1,  Works  dealing  specifically  with  the  Modern  Lyric 

Archer,  W.,  Poets  of  the  Younger  Generation,  1902.  (An  import- 
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subject.) 

Arnold,  M.,  Essays  in  Criticism,  First  Series,  1865 ;  Second  Series, 
1888;  "On  the  Study  of  Celtic  Literature,"  1895. 

Bagehot,  W.,  Literary  Studies,  1879. 

Benson,  A.  C,  Essays,  1890. 

Brandes,  G.,  Naturalism  in  England,  Main  Currents  in  Nine- 
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Brcx)ke,  S.  A.,  Four  Victorian  Poets  (Clough,  Rossetti,  Arnold, 
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1852,"  1908. 

Brooke,  S.  A.,  Studies  in  Poetry  (Blake,  Scott,  Keats,  Shelley), 
1907. 

Buchanan,  R.  ["Thomas  Maitland"],  The  Fleshly  School  of 
Poetry,  in  C(>ntcm|)<)rary  Review,  Oct.,  1871. 

Buchanan,  R.,  A  Look  About  Literature,  1877.  (Contains  "Lines 
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Cary,  E.  L.,  The  Rosscitu,  1900. 

de  Selincourt,  B.,  William  Blake,  1909. 

Dow<lcn,  E.,  Poetical  Feeling  for  Nature,  Contemporary  Review, 
II.  1800. 

Dowdcii,  E..  Studies  in  Litrrntiirr.  17SV-1S'77,  1878. 

Dowden,  E.,  Transcripts  and  Studies,  1888.  (Essay  on  Victorian 
Literature,  especially.) 


318  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Gosse,  E.,  Coventry  Patmore,  "Literary  Lives,"  1905. 

Gosse,  E.,  A  Plea  for  Certain  Exotic  Forms  of  Verse,  Cornhill 
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Henley,  W.  E.,  Burns :  Life,  Genius,  Achievement,  1898.  (Re- 
printed from  "The  Centenary  Burns,"  1896-97,  which  con- 
tains a  complete  bibliography.) 

Henley,  W.  E.,  Views  and  Reviews,  Essays  in  Appreciation,  1891, 
1892,  2  vols. 

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Kingsley,  C,  Burns  and  his  School,  1880. 

Le  Gallienne,  R.,  Attitudes  and  Avowals,  1910. 

More,  P.  E.,  Shelburne  Essays,  First  Series,  1904,  contains  an 
admirable  appreciation  of  Arthur  Symons:  the  "Two  Illu- 
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others. 

Nicoll,  W.  R.,  and  Wise,  Z.  J.,  Literary  Anecdotes  of  the  Nine- 
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1871. 
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beginnings.) 
Saintsbury,  G.,  Nineteenth  Century  Literature,  1780-1895,  1896. 
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ant not  only  as  to  Sharp  and  "Fiona   Macleod"  but  for 
other  current  matters.) 
Sharp,  W.,  Dante  Gabriel  Rossetti,  a  Record  and  a  Study,  1883. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  319 

Stedman,  E.  C,  Victorian  Poets,  1876. 

Symonds,  J.  A.,  Essays  Speculative  and  Suggestive,  1890,  2 
vols. 

Symons,  A.,  Studies  in  Prose  and  Verse,  1904. 

Symons,  A.,  The  Romantic  Movement  in  English  Poetry,  1909. 

Walker,  H.,  The  Greater  Victorian  Poets,  1895. 

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1909. 

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Weygandt,  C,  Iri'ih  Plays  and  Playwrights,  Boston,  1913. 

Weygandt,  C,  The  Poetry  of  A.  C.  Benson,  The  Scwanoe  Re- 
view, Oct.,  1900;  The  Poetry  of  Laiorcnce  libiyon,  ib.,  July, 
190.-5;  The  Poetry  of  Stephen  Phillips,  ib.,  Jan.,  1909;  "  A.  E." : 
The  Irish  Emerson  (George  W.  Russell),  ib.,  April,  1907; 
William  IVatson  and  his  Poetry,  ib.,  April,  1901. 

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190.5. 

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F.    2.    AnTHOUKJIKH     of     Ni.METKKNTII     CeNTIMIV,      \'j(T(JIIIAN 
AND    CONTEMI'OUAUY    LyHICAI.    1*()KTI{V 

Adatns,  W.  1).,  iMllcr-day  Lyrics,  1878.  (Contains  "A  Note  on 
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320  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

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Quiller-Couch,  A.  T.,  The  Oxford  Book  of  Victorian  Verse,  1912. 

Rolleston,  T.  W.,  and  Brooke,  S.  A.,  A  Treasury  of  Irish  Poetry 
in  the  English  Tongue,  1905. 

Stedman,  E.  C,  A  Victorian  Anthology,  1837-1895,  1895. 

Waddington,  S.,  English  Sonnets  by  Living  Writers,  1888. 

White,  G.,  Ballades  and  Rondeaus,  1893,  with  introduction. 


INDEX 


Adams,  Jean,  144. 

Addison,  Joseph,  128,  134. 

Address,  the  l>Tical,  24. 

"A.  E."  See  Russell,  George  Wil- 
liam. 

iEschylus,  110. 

.(Esculapius,  268. 

Akenside,  Mark,  136. 

Alexander,  Sir  William.  See  Stirl- 
ing, Earl  of. 

Alexandrine,  44. 

Allingham,  William,  212,  281. 

Anacreon,  74,  90. 

Anapests,  125. 

Anne  of  Denmark,  75. 

Anne,  Queen,  124,  12,5;  poetry  of 
the  reign  of,  127-131. 

Arl)cr,  E..  50. 

Archer,  W.,  290,  291. 

Areopagus  club,  the,  53. 

Ariosto,  37. 

Aristotle,  1. 

Armstrong,  John,  136. 

Arnold,  Sir  Ivlwiri,  214. 

Arnold,  .Matthew,  1.3.J,  153,  171, 
188,  219-221,  222-224.  225-228, 
245.  256.  265,  271,  297. 

Arnold.  Dr.  Thomius,  221,  222. 

Aseham.  Roger,  41. 

Auhr,  25. 

Aubrey.  John,  82. 

Austin,  Dr.  Adarn.  144. 

Austin.  Alfre.l.  217.  248. 

Ayton.  Sir  R<.b.rt,  75,  91. 

Aytoun,  WiHi.ini  Edmondstoune, 
188.  2.35. 


Bacon,  Sir  Francis,  93. 

Haillie,  Joanna,  147. 

Baillie,  Lady  Grizel,  143. 

Balcarres,  Earl  of,  144. 

Ballade,  the,  24;  the  vogue  of,  25; 

form  of,  29;  Chaucer's  use  of, 

29;  revival  of,  257,  266. 
Balladry,  136,  213,  278. 
Barbauld,  .\nna  La;titia,  148. 
Barclay,  Alexander,  32. 
Barnes,  Barnabe,  52,  62,  64,  93. 
Barnes,  William,    187,    190,    193, 

273. 
Bamfield,  Richard,  49,  50,  64. 
Biirton,  Bernard,  168. 
Ba^se,  William,  81,  82. 
Baudelaire,  290. 
Bayley,  Thomas  Ilaynes,  107. 
Beatrice,  38. 
Beatlie,  .James,  130. 
Beaumont,  Francis,  8.3-85. 
Bedd(K-s,  Thom.is  Lovcll,  183, 191. 
Beellioven,  I5(i. 
B.hii.  Ai)liani.  121,  122. 
Bennet,  William  Cox,  214. 
Benson,  ;\rlhur  Christopher,  184, 

270. 
lirmrulf,  9. 
lirrgrrrl.  4!). 
Bibh-,  94.  106. 
Binyon,  I>aurence.  270.  271. 
Blaekie.  Jolm  Stimrt.  211. 
IMjiekl.Mk.  Thoinius.  lU. 
ni.iir.  Boberf,  133. 
Blake.  William.  137.  140-142.  147, 

148,  151.  216,  261,  296. 


S22 


INDEX 


I 


Blanchard,  Laman,  185. 

Blount,  Martha,  127. 

Bodenham,  John,  49. 

Boilcau,  124. 

Boleyn,  George,  40. 

Bolton,  Edmund,  57,  58. 

Bowles,  William  Lisle,  86, 132, 161, 

206. 
Boyle,  Elizabeth,  61. 
Bradlaugh,  C,  248. 
Brandl,  A.,  9,  32. 
Breton,  Nicholas,  43,  47,  49,  93, 

100,  294. 
Bridgeman,  Sir  Orlando,  98. 
Bridges,   Robert,   257,   264,   266- 

268,  270. 
Brome,  Alexander,  104. 
Brome,  Richard,  83,  91,  102. 
Bronte,  Emily,  209,  281. 
Brooke,  A.  S.,  282. 
Brooke,  Christopher,  81,  82. 
Brough,  Robert,  215. 
Brougham,  Lord,  170. 
Brown,  Oliver  Maddox,  261. 
Brown,  Thomas  Edward,  214. 
Browne,  Sir  Thomas,  123. 
Browne  of  Tavistock,  William,  73, 

81,  82,  85,  93,  100. 
Browning,  Elizabeth  Barrett,  86, 

203,  206-208,  213,  256. 
Browning,  Robert,   193,  200-206, 

217,  220,  221,  234,  245,  256,  262, 

260,  274,  297,  298. 
Bryan,  iSir  Francis,  40. 
Buchanan,  Robert,  232,  252-256, 

270,  271,  287,  288. 
Buckinghamshire,   John  Sheffield, 

Duke  of,  102,  121. 
Bulwer,  F^dward,  Lord  Lytton,  191, 

192,  214. 
Burnet,  Gilbert,  Bishop,  120. 
Burns,  Robert,  132,  140,  144-148, 


151,  158,  166,  167, 183, 190,  273, 

281,  296. 
Burton,  Robert,  107. 
Butler,  S.amuel,  5,  119. 
Byrd,  William,  51. 
BjTom,  John,  136. 
Byron,  George  Gordon,  Lord,  132, 

153,  169-173,  179,  182,  183,  180, 

189,  206,  228,  296. 
Byronism,  170,  171,  189,  192,  196, 

227. 

Credmon,  9. 

Calverley,  Charles  Stuart,  217, 256. 

Campbell,  Thomas,  132,  164,  165, 

168,  183,  185. 
Campion,  Thomas,  45,  70,  73,  74, 

85,  118,  216,  268,  294. 
Canning,  George,  167. 
Canzon,  46,  49,  51,  52. 
Carew,  Thomas,  83,  88,  89,  91,  92, 

101,  102,  108,  112,  120,  161,  295. 
Carey,  Henry,  128. 
Carlyle,   Thomas,   158,   203,   210, 

215,  220,  221. 
Carol,  20-22. 
Carpenter,  F.  L,  51. 
Carroll,  Lewis,  215,  217. 
Cartwright,   William,  83.   91,  97, 

105,  112. 
Gary,  E.  L.,  229. 
Gary,  Sir  Lucius,  79. 
Catullus,  74,  77,  90,  216. 
Cavalier  poets,    88-93,    104,    105, 

119. 
Celtic  Revival,  the,  181,  212,  246, 

254,  264,  279-286,  291,  298. 
Chambers,  E.  K.,  12,  18. 
Chanson  a  persnnnagcs,  25. 
Chanson  (Taventure,  24. 
Chant  royal,  258. 
Chapman,  George,  02,  70,  85.  86. 


INDEX 


323 


Charles  I,  85,  88-90.  93,  99,  104, 

105,  294. 
Charles  II,  100,  102,  lOG,  112,  115, 

120. 
Chartism,  263. 
Chatterton,  Thomas,  137-138,  UO, 

148,  261,  296. 
Chaucer,  Geoffrey,  14,  25,  28-30, 

32,  36,  106,  292. 
Chopin,  156. 
Churchill,  Charles,  136. 
Clare,  John,  184. 
Classical  influences  in  the  lyric,  40, 

45,  08,  74,  77,  106,  108,  196,  226, 

227,  239,  253,  266,  271,  272. 
Classicality,  77,  113,  114,  196,  226, 

227,  295,  296. 
Clerk,  Sir  John,  144. 

Clough,   .Vrthur   Ilu^h,   220,   221, 

222-227j>256. 
"Cockney  School,"  the,  179. 
Coleman,  George,  167. 
Coleri(Jf(c,  Hartley,  185. 
Coleridge,  Samuel  Taylor,  3,  148- 

152,  155-157,  158,  168,  183,  192. 

228,  280,  297. 
Coleridge,  Sara,  168. 
Collin.s,  J.  C,  122. 
Collin.s,  Mortimer,  217. 
Collins,  William,  134-137. 
Comptcynt,  the,  30. 
"Conceit,"    the,   54;   defined,   55; 

populari/ed  hy  Si<lney,  55;  as 
used  by  Donne  and  Southwell, 
55,  56;  ingenious,  of  Cowley,  5(i, 
57.  104;  referable  to  I'etrareh, 
57;  Carolan  use  of  the,  8.3,  95,  96. 
103;  disrepute  of.  UH.  112,  113; 
excc.s.sc.s  of  the,  not  aeeoiuitahle 
for  the  cla.sHieiil  n-aefion,  113; 
U.HI'  of.  in  rontem|)(»rary  jjoelry, 
276.  278.  296. 


Congrcve,  William,  104,  123-124. 

Constable,  Henry,  49,  60,  02,  93. 

Converso,  51. 

Cornwall,"  "Barry.  See  Procter. 

Cornysshe,  William,  35. 

Cory,  William,  216. 

Cotton,  Charles,  100, 101, 104, 118, 

267. 
Couplet,  the  decasyllabic,  114, 125, 

206. 
Courtoisie,  13,  14. 
Cowley,  Abraham,  56,  83, 102-104, 

105,  112,  118,  119,  123, 131,  213. 
Cowper,    William,    132,    138-139, 

151,  193. 
Crabbe,  George,  139. 149, 167, 186, 

192,  253. 
Craik,  Dinah  Maria,  209. 
Crashaw,  Richard,  83,  94-99,  102, 

105,    107,    112,   113,    137,  276, 

295. 
Crawford,  Robert,  143. 
Cromwell,  Oliver,  101,  110. 
(Ainningliiun,  .Mhiti,  167. 
Cynewulf,  10. 
Cynicism,  7,  68,  84,  99,  120,  290. 

Dactylics,  180,  224. 

Daniel,  .Samuel,  45,  60-63,  70.  81, 

85,  294. 
Dante,  .37,  38,  231. 
Darley,  George,  183,  192,  281. 
Darwin,  Charles,  221. 
Darwin,  Krasniiis,  1(»2.  \\1.  151. 
Davenanl,  Sir  William.    105.    114. 

115. 
Davidson,  John.  264,  205,  270.  271. 

27H.  279. 
Daviivs,  Sir  John.  62. 
Davis.  Thomas,  211,  212,  281. 
Dllml,  24. 
Debu.sfly,  160. 


524 


INDEX 


"Decadents,"  the,  '217,264,   289, 

290. 
Defoe,  Daniel,  286. 
Dekker,  Thomas,  70,  71,  83. 
Delhi  Crusca,  165. 
De  Quincey,  Thomas,  164. 
Dermody,  Thomas,  165. 
Descort,  25. 
Desportes,  61. 

Devereu.x,  Lady  Penelope,  59. 
Dibdin,  Charles,  165-167. 
Dickens,  Charles,  215,  286. 
Diogenes,  6. 

Dixon,  Richard  Watson,  245. 
Dobell,  Sidney,  188,  215,  235. 
Dobson,  Austin,  125,     217,     256- 

258,  266. 
Dodsley,  Robert,  122,  128,  136. 
Domett,  Alfred,  211. 
Donne,  John,  54,  55,  62,  63, 67-70, 

76,  80,  82,  83,  84,  89,  93,  95,  96, 

99,  103,  113,  142.  161,  275,  276, 

294. 
Dorset,  Earl  of,  Charles  Sackville, 

120. 
Doubleday,  Thomas,  168. 
Douglas,  Gawain,  32. 
Dowden,  Edward,  262. 
Dowland,  John,  51,  70,  74. 
Dowson,  Ernest,  264,  289,  290. 
Doyle,  Sir  Francis  Hastings,  188, 

287. 
Drama,  2;  songs  of  the,  83,  84,  107, 

190-192. 
Drayton,  Michael,  48,  49,  60,  01, 

63,  70,  71,  73,  81,  287. 
Drummond,  William,  73-75,  294. 
Drury,  Mistress  Elizabeth,  68,  101. 
Dryden,  John,  102,  104,  105,  106, 

112-114,  110,  117,  118,  119,  122, 

123,  125,  128.  295,  296. 
Du  liartas.  71. 


DufiFerin,  Lady,  209. 
Dunbar,  William.  30-32,  293. 
Dyer,  John,  133. 

Edwards,  Richard,  42. 
Edward  IH,  28. 
Eglinton,"  "John,  285. 
Eleanor  of  Guienne,  13. 
Elegy,  07,  82,  198,  207,  225,  292. 
Eliot,  George.  209,  221. 
Elizabeth,  Queen,  62,  93. 
Elizabethan  revival,  18.3,  191,  192. 
Elliott,  Ebenezer,  167. 
Emerson,  Ralph  Waldo,  221,  284. 
Empire,"  "poets  of,  264,  287,  288, 

298. 
Epic,  9,  141,  239. 
Epigram,  7,  78,  80,  82,  90, 162, 163, 

164,  269. 
Epitaph,  79,  82,  163.      *' 
Epithalamium,  67,  84-86. 
Erasmus,  33. 
Erskine,  Harry,  Earl  of  Rosslyn, 

144. 
Essex,  Robert,  Earl  of,  70. 
Est,  Michael,  51. 
Etheredge,  Sir  George,  119,  121. 

Fairfax,  Lord,  100. 
Falconer,  William,  136. 
Fardyng,  Thomas,  35. 
Ferguson,  Sir  Samuel,  211. 
Fergusson,  Robert,  145,  281. 
Ficino,  47. 

"  Fiona  Macleod."  See  Sharp,  Wil- 
liam. 
FitzGerald,  Edward,  168,  195. 
Flatman,  Thomas,  119. 
Flecknoe,  Richard,  122. 
Fletcher,  Giles,  81. 
Fletcher,  the  younger,  Giles,  81. 
Fletcher,  J.  B.,  38.  59. 


INDEX 


325 


Fletcher,  John,  Si,  106,  107. 

Fletcher,  Phineas,  81. 

Flugel,  E.,  3i. 

Folk-poetry,  11,  12,  16,  19-21,  94, 
143.  145,  185. 

Ford,  John.  85. 

Francis,  St.,  27. 

Franciscans,  27. 

Fraunce,  Abraham,  45. 

French  influences  in  the  lyric,  12- 
15,  24,  25,  27,  29,  39,  46,  49,  58, 
60,  61,  100,  239,  257,  258. 

Frere,  John  Hookham,  167. 

Froude,  Ilurrell,  217. 

Gamett,  R.,  191. 

Ga.scoigne,  George,  42-44,  93. 

Gay,  John,  128-130. 

Geddcs,  Alexander,  144. 

George,  King,  127. 

Germ,  the,  213,  230,  2.33. 

(iifford.  William,  86,  105. 

(iilbert,  William  S.,  215,  217. 

(ilci'man,  9,  11. 

(ifxlwin,  Mary,  174. 

G<K-tlie,  171. 

Goldsmith.  Oliver,  136.  140.  281. 

(longora.  57. 

G.Mxlwin,  ('...  Hi. 

{f<K>g«',  Hiirnalw,  44. 

Go^.s<',  K..  102.  101,  l.'M,  213.  2.'">7. 

2,'j8,  26<5. 
Gower.  John,  .30.  .32. 
Gray.  I)avi<l.  253. 
Gray,  Thomas.  132.  134-140.  227. 

26.';.  26H,  271. 
Gre.-n<-.    H<.l,.rl.    43.   48.    49.   70. 

100. 
Grevillc,    Fulke.    43.   53,    51.    70. 

204. 
Grimald.  Nirhoias.  40.  41.  44. 
Gummcre.  V.  B..  2.  12,  32. 


Habington,  William,  86, 95,99, 101. 

Hadrian,  125,  120. 

Ha6z,  189. 

Hake,  Thomas  Gordon,  210. 

Hales,  Thomas  de,  14,  16. 

Halket,  George,  143. 

Hall,  Joseph,  5,  28. 

Hallam,  Arthur,  195,  198. 

Hamilton,   William,   of   Bangour, 

143. 
Hamilton,  William,  of  Gilbertfield, 

143. 
Handel,  129. 
Hardy,  Thomas,  273. 
Harvey,  Gabriel,  43,  45. 
Hawes,  Stephen,  32. 
Hayley,  William,  147. 
Hazlitt,  W.,  183. 
lleber,  Reginald,  Bishop,  184. 
Hedonism.  89,  90. 
Hemans,  Felicia  Dorothea,  167. 
Henley,  William  Ernest,  145,  258, 

259,  200,  264,  266,  270,  271. 
Henry  H,  1.3. 

Henry  Mil,  24,  32,  34-36,40. 
Ilciiryson,  Robert,  20.  25.  30. 
Herbert,  (Jeorge.  83.  95-98,   112, 

184.  295. 
H<Tri(k.  Robert,  83.  H(i,  8S  91,  94. 

101.  102.  105.  112.  117,212,210. 

294,  2!)(!. 
Heywo<Ki,  Joim.  32,  33. 
HeywiMMJ,  Thoniius.  83. 
Hilda.  Abbess.  9. 
Hinksun.    Kallierine  Tynan.    285, 

291. 
Hogg,  James,   147.   158.   185.    192, 

2.52.  281. 
Hotner.  I. 
H(M.d.  Thom.-Ls.  IS,-;.  180,  192,  216, 

2.'>3. 
Hook,  Theodore,  107. 


326 


INDEX 


Hopkins,  Gerard,  261. 

Hopkins,  John,  93. 

Hopper,  Nora  (Mrs.  Chesson),  285, 

291. 
Horace,  77,  258. 
Home,  Richard  Henry,  183,  190, 

193. 
Hoskins,  Sir  John,  91. 
Houghton.    -See    Milnes,    Richard 

Monckton. 
Housman,    Albert    Edward,    26-i, 

272,  273. 
Housman,  Laurence,  264,  277-279. 
Howitt,  Mary,  167. 
Hrothgar,  9. 
Hugo,  Victor,  240. 
Hume,  Tobias,  51,  74. 
Hunnis,  William,  42. 
Hunt,  Holman,  229. 
Hunt,  Leigh,  168,  169,  179,  192. 
Huxley,  Thomas  Henry.  221. 
Hyde,  Douglas,  282. 
Hymns,  14,  46,  107,  139. 

Idyl,  49. 

Impressionism,  228. 

Ingelow,  Jean,  209,  210. 

Irish  poetry.  189,  190,  211-212, 
281-286. 

Italian  influences  in  the  lyric,  37- 
39,  41,  47,  49,  50-52,  59,  60,  68, 
69,  75,  106,  109,  239,  266. 

James  I,  30,  73,  75,  81.  85,  87,  88, 

93,  105,  294. 
James  IV,  of  Scotland,  31,  32,  293. 
Johnson,  Lionel,  279-281,  285. 
Johnson,    Samuel,  1.36,   137,    139, 

140,  148. 
Jones,  Ebenezer,  215. 
Jones,  Ernest  Charles,  215. 
Jones,  Robert,  51,  74. 


Jonson,  Ben,  41,  56,  63,  74,  77-80, 
82-86, 88,  89.  91,  93,  97, 101, 103. 
108,  113,  114,  179,  294-296. 

Juvenal,  77. 

Kastner,  L.  E.,  60. 

Keats,  John,   107, '  149,  169,  175, 

178-183,  185,  186,  191,  196, 203, 

226,  228,  232,  235,  246,  247,  266, 

272,  280,  296. 
Keble,  John,  184,  217-219.  222. 
Kemble,  Fanny,  208. 
Killigrew,  Anne,  116. 
King,  Bishop  Henry,  91,   99,   105, 

122. 
Kingsley,  Charles,  215,  221,  251. 
Kipling,  Rudyard,  254,  264,  265. 

286,  288. 

Lai,  25. 

Lamb,  Charles,  135,  148,  160,  161. 

166,  168,  179,  183,  193,  267. 
Landor,  Walter  Savage,  125,  148, 

162-164,  166,  193,  203,  240,  269. 
Lang,  Andrew,  257,  266. 
Lanier,  Nicholas,  117. 
Lansdowne,  Lord,  121. 
Latin  verse,  influence  of.  14, 19, 27, 

33. 
Laura,  38. 
Lawes,  Henry,  117. 
Lawes,  William,  117. 
Lee,  Anthony,  40. 
Lee,  Sir  S.,  59,  60. 
Lee-Hamilton,  Eugene,  261. 
Le  Gallienne,  Richard,  250.  291. 
Leigh,  Henry  S.,  217. 
Leighton,  Robert,  216. 
Leyden,  Dr.  .John,  168. 
Lindsay,  Lady  Anne,  144. 
Linton,  William  James,  216. 
Lloyd,  Charles,  160. 


INDEX 


327 


Locker-Lampson,  F.,  7,  127,  217. 

Lockhart,  John  Gibson,  184. 

Lodge,  Thomiis,  43,  49,  61,  64. 

Logan,  John,  145. 

Lovelace,  Richard,  91,  99,  101, 104, 
112. 

Lowe,  John,  144. 

Lullaby,  21,  22. 

Luther,  Martin,  34. 

Lydgate,  John,  30,  32. 

Lyly,  John,  43. 

LjTiche,  Richard,  56. 

Lyric,  the,  defined,  1-8;  song  qual- 
ity and  .subjectivencss,  of,  1 ;  and 
the  drama,  1-4;  rhythm  and,  2, 
3;  unity  an  essential  of,  4,  5; 
brevity,  universality  of,  5,  6; 
range  of,  6-8;  and  the  epigram,  7, 
8;  an  element  in  .\nglo-Saxon 
poetry,  9-11;  relation  of  folk- 
.songtothe,  11,  li;  ot  troiivt  re  and 
troubadour,  12-14;  the  nK'diieval, 
12-30;  in  Tudor  England,  31-72; 
Provenf;al  and  Italian  influences 
on,  37-39;  classical  influences  on, 
40,  4.5;  metres  aud  forms  of  Kliza- 
belhan,  44-.53;  si)iriliuid  vurit'ty 
of,  the  ElizalH-than,  52-72;  to  be 
set  to  music,  50-52,  73,  74;  devo- 
tional, of  the  reign,  54;  "con- 
ceit" and  other  .superficialities  of, 
54  58;  under  llii- earlier  Stuarts, 
73-111;  r«.'strictive  influences  on, 
80,  81 ;  in  drama  and  inasf|uc,  83- 
86;  thrCarolan  n-ligi..us.  87-99; 
of  III.'  Cavalirr  p(H-l>,  99-104;  of 
Milton,  107-1 1 1  ;ancxpression  of 
personality,  114;  at  the  I{cstora- 
tion,  112-123;  drdinr-  of,  in  the 
age  f»f  .\nne,  125  131;  conven- 
tionality of,  in  the  eighteenth 
century,  l.SO,  137;  forerunners  of 


the  romantic  revival  in,  139-148; 
in  Scotland,  142-147;  and  the 
romantic  revival,  149-193;  the 
Word.sworthian  process,and  reach 
in,  152-155;  the  sentimental, 
165,  166;  of  patriotism  and  war, 
165,  168,  187,  188,  190,  197,  215, 
216,  235,  287,  288;  Byron  and,  of 
eloquence,  171,  172;  Shelley  and, 
of  rhapsody,  174-177;  Keats  and 
the,  of  the  senses,  179-182;  Eliza- 
bethan revival  in  drama  and,  183; 
the  modern  religious,  184,  199, 
207,  216,  218-220,  233-234,- 275, 
277;  of  social  indignation  and  re- 
form, 185-187,  207,  215,  253- 
255;  historical  and  patriotic,  187, 
188,  211,  216,  235;  of  the  reign 
of  Victoria,  194-263;  of  Tenny- 
son, 197,  198;  Browning  and  the 
extension  of  the  sphere  of,  2(K)- 
202;  difTusion  of  the  Victorian, 
214-217;  and  the  Oxford  Move- 
ment, 217-228;  of  the  poetry  of 
<loul)t, 220-222;  thcprc-Raphael- 
ite,  229-2.34;  Swinlnirnc's  range 
and  variety  in,  240-245;  su.s- 
tained  f)ower  in,  252;  revival  of 
French  forms  in,  257,  258;  in  the 
liust  years  of  \ictoria,  258-263; 
of  contcmporarj'  Wordsworth- 
ians,  2(i5-274;  complex  elements 
in  the  modern,  267,  270-272; 
tlic  rhapsodist,  275  277;  in  the 
Celtic  revival,  280-286;  of  the 
"p(M-ts  of  em|)ire."  287,  288;  «>f 
"decadence,"  289.  290;  minor 
confcmixiraricH  in,  290,  291; 
vogue  of  the  contemporary,  298; 
Huminary  of  the  history  of,  291- 
300;  future  and  permanency  of, 
300.     And  .sec  IVH'lry. 


;3^28 


INDEX 


Lyrical    Ballads,    118.    151,    152, 
164. 

Macaronic  verse,  15. 

Mucaulay,  Thomas  Babington,187, 

188. 
Macdonald,  George,  216. 
Mackay,  Charles,  215. 
Maclean,  Letitia  Elizabeth  (Lan- 

don),  168. 
Madrigal,  50,  51. 
Maeterlinck,  284. 
Magic,  1-iO,  155,  156, 158, 159, 181, 

182,  216. 
Maitland,"    "Thomas.      See    Bu- 
chanan, 232. 
Mallet,  David,  143. 
Mangan,  James  Clarence,  187, 189, 

190,  211,  281. 
Mant,  Richard,  Bishop,  184. 
Marenzio,  51. 
Marinism,  57,  107. 
Marino,  57. 
Marlowe,  Christopher,  36,  47,  83, 

86,  247. 
Marston,  Philip  Burke,  246. 
Martial,  77. 
Marvell,  Andrew,    100,  101,    104, 

119. 
Maseficld,  John,  288. 
Mason,  William,  136. 
Masque,  lyrics  of  the,  85,  86. 
Massey,  Gerald,  188,  215. 
Massinger,  Philip,  85. 
Maurice,  Frederick  Denison,  221. 
May,  Thomas,  117. 
Mayne,  John,  144. 
Mazzini,  240. 
Melton,  W.  F.,  80. 
Meredith,   George,   248,   250-252, 

264,  288,  298. 
Mesihi,  189. 


Metaphysical  poetry,  09,  83,  101, 

275. 
Meynell,  Alice  Thompson,  274, 291. 
Mill,  J.  S.,  221. 
Millais,  John,  229. 
Milman,  Henry  Hart,  184. 
Milnes,    Richard  Monckton,   188, 

210,  217. 
Millon,  John,  84,  95,  100,  101,  102, 

104-112,  116,  117,  130,  131,  134, 

175,  265,  267,  268,  271.  295,  296. 
Minot,  Lawrence,  28. 
Minstrel,  11,  17,  18,  27,  34,  184, 

293. 
Miscellanies,  poetic,  40-43,  44,  49, 

52,  117.  118.  148. 
Money-Coutts,    Francis    Burdctt, 

291. 
Montgomery,  James,  184. 
Montrose,  James  Graham,  Marquis 

of,  105. 
Moore,  Thomas,  165, 166, 172, 192, 

281. 
Moore,  T.  Sturge.  264,  272. 
More,  Hannah,  147. 
More,  P.  E.,  295. 
More,  Sir  Thomas,  33. 
Morison,  Sir  Henry,  103. 
Morley,  Thomas,  51. 
Morris,  Lewis,  214. 
Morris,   William,   229,   230,   236- 

238,  245,  246,  262. 
Moschus,  108. 
Motherwell,  William,  188. 
Munday,  Anthony,  44,  49. 
Music,  in  poetry,  1,  16,  17,  35,  70, 

73.  74,  138,  156,  165-167,  276, 

283,  294. 
Myers,  Frederick,  246. 

Naime,  Caroline  Oliphant,  Lady, 
147. 


INDEX 


329 


Napoleon,  170. 

Nash,  Thomas,  15,  59,  70,  71. 

Nature  in  pwtry,  16,  98,  100,  1.30, 
131;  revival  of  the  cult  of,  133, 
135,  139,  141.  149;  the  Words- 
worthian  cult  of,  153-155,  1G4, 
1G7,  175,  179-181,  184,  190,  2)£4, 
242,  243,  251,  252,  2G7.  209,  278. 

Neilson,  W.  .\.,  295. 

Newbolt,  Henry,  204,  288. 

Newman,  Cardinal.  217-219,  221, 
234.  297. 

Noel,  Roden,  240. 

Norris,  John,  of  Bcmerton,  123. 

Norton,  Caroline,  209. 

Noyes,  Alfred,  230,  288. 

Occleve,  Thomas,  30. 
Octo.syllabics,  49.  50,  101.  181. 
Ode,  48,  50,  52,  71,  79,  103,  104, 

119,  122.  124,  134-130.  213. 
Oldham.  John.  119,  122. 
O'Kecfe,  John.  107. 
O'Neill,  Moira,  285. 
Orrery,  Earl  of,  119. 
O'Shaughne.s.sy,  Arthur,  240. 
Osirian,  141. 
Oxford,  K<l\vard  dc  \'(tc,  Karl  of, 

42.  70. 
Oxford,  or  Tractarian,  Movement, 

1S4,  217-219,  221.  222.  230,  201. 

27 1.  29  V. 

Padelford.  V.  M.,  19.  25,  39. 

PaKan.  I.sobel  or  Tiljhii-,  144. 

Pal^rave,  Franci.s  Turner,  130,214. 

Palinode,  57. 

Paris.  (ia.s|c)n.  14. 

Pamell,  Thomas.  130. 

Pa.sloral.   the.  fashion.  45-52;  08; 

revival  of.  100;  100.  129. 
Panlourcllc,  24,  25. 


Pater,  Walter,  231. 

Patmore,  Coventry.  212-214,  256, 
204,  274. 

Paton,  Sir  J.  Noel,  234. 

Pattison,  Mark,  110. 

Pavy,  Salathiel,  79. 

Payne,  John,  201. 

Peacock,  Thomas  Love,  185.  192, 
193. 

Peele,  George,  43,  49. 

Pembroke,  Countess  of,  82. 

Pembroke,  William,  Earl  of,  82. 

Percy,  Bishop  Thoma.s,  130. 

Petrarch,  37-40,  57,  59,  74,  293. 

Petrarchism,  33,  37-39,  50-52,  54, 
57,  59,  00,  08,  09,  75,  109,  113. 
293.  290. 

Phiiip.s,  Ambrose,  129. 

Piiilips,  Mistress  Katherlne.  119. 

Phillips,  Stephen,  200.  271,  272. 

Pindaric  Ode.     Sec  Ode. 

Platonism,  38,  40,  59,  123,  293. 

Playfor<l,  Henry,  117. 

Poe,  Edgar  Allen,  190. 

Poetry,  place  of  the  lyric  in,  1,  2; 
and  verse,  2,  3;  defined,  3;  and 
didacticism,  4,  5;  epic  and  ele- 
giac quality  of  Anglo-Saxon,  9- 
12;  folk,  11,  12,  10,  19-21,  143; 
of  the  art  of  love.  12-15;  of  the 
minstrel,  10-18;  of  court  and 
cloister,  20-30;  conventionality 
of  mcflia-val,  31;  a  diversion  of 
rhetoric,  32;  of  the  court  of 
H<nry  VHI.  34-:50;  the  new.  of 
Wyatt  an.l  Surrey,  37  41;  Ital- 
ian iidluriice  on  I'^nglish,  .37-41, 
47.  49,  51.  52.  .W.  0(t,  OH.  09,  75. 
100.  109;  of  the  Eli/.abrl  lian  niis- 
(cliuny, 41  43;mea,siircsof  I'llizii- 
bclhan,  44,  45.  50.  51;  pastoral, 
45-52,  OH,  100.  10(i,  129;  of  the 


330 


INDEX 


Elizabethan  sonnet,  58-67;  of 
Spenser,  Donne,  and  Jonson,  con- 
trasted, 75-78;  later  pastoral,  81 ; 
Elizabethan  and  Carolan,  con- 
trasted, 86-88;  split  between 
sacred  and  secular,  88,  89;  de- 
votional, 89-99;  of  gallantry, 
99-101,  116,  119-123;  Pattison 
on,  110,  111;  Jonson  the  source 
of,  Augustan  ideals  in,  113,  114; 
later  miscellanies  of,  117, 118;  of 
the  age  of  Anne,  125-131 ;  revival 
of,  with  Thompson,  133-139; 
religious,  136,  137,  184,  199,  207, 
216,  218-220,  233-234,  275,  277; 
forerunners  of  the  romantic  re- 
vival in,139-148;  of  the  romantic 
revival,  149-183;  Wordsworth- 
ian  theory  and  practice  in,  149- 
155;  magic  in,  155-159;  taste 
and  reserve  in,  163,  164;  the  By- 
ronic  pose  in,  170,  171;  of  revolt 
and  rhapsody, 170-172,  174, 178, 
240;  the  cult  of  beauty  in,  178- 
182,  196,  198;  the  "Cockney 
School"  in,  179;  Elizabethan  re- 
vival in,  183,  190,  191;  of  social 
reform,  185,  187,  207,  215,  253- 
255;  patriotic  and  war,  187,  188, 
211,  216,  235;  of  rural  life,  190, 
272;  of  taste,  196-199;  of  politics 
and  philosophy,  199,  200,  241, 
242,  254,  255,  269,  of  the  via 
media,  199,  219;  woman  in,  206- 
210;  of  Catholicism,  211,  214, 
274,  275;  diffusion  of  Victorian, 
214-217;  of  faith,  228,  229;  of 
doubt,  220-222.  226,  227;  and 
rationalism,  221,  226;  pre-Ra- 
phaclite,  229-234;  of  city  and 
street,  233,  253,  259,  260,  270, 
271,  278,  288;   mediievalism  in. 


236;  influence  of  Tennyson  on, 
236,  237;  Norse  spirit  in  modern 
English,  237;  decorative,  238;  of 
thought  and  feeling  contrasted, 
245;  later  pre-Raphaelite,  245- 
247;  "decadence"  in,  247,  264, 
289,  290;  of  pessimism,  248,  249; 
spiritual  significance  in,  251;  of 
pure  idea,  252;  of  exotic  French 
form,  256-258;  classification  of 
contemporary  English,  264,  265; 
elegiac  quality  in  modern,  269, 
272;  of  the  Celtic  revival.  280- 
286;  of  "empire,"  286-288;  mi- 
nor, of  the  present,  291;  diffu- 
sion of  contemporary,  298,  299; 
mediocrity  in,  298,  299;  assured 
future  of.  299,  300.  And  see 
Lyric. 

Poitou,  William  of,  13. 

Pollok,  Robert,  184. 

Pontuox,  Claude  de,  61. 

Pope,  Alexander,  5,  102,  118,  120, 
123,  125-130,  132-134,  136,  138, 
139,  147,  149,  151,  170.  296. 

Poulter's  measure,  44. 

Praed,  Winthrop  Mack  worth,  125, 
187.  188,  189,  217.  256. 

Pre-Raphaelite,  Keats  presages 
the,  movement,  181;  Tennyson 
and  the,  poetry,  196;  Patmore's 
relation  to  the,  movement,  213; 
defined,  229;  the,  brotherhood, 
230;  poets  of  the,  movement, 
230-247,  255,  256;  introduction 
of  exotic  forms  by,  poets,  257;  in- 
fluences in  contemporary  poetry, 
262,  264,  272,  274;  influences  in 
the  Neo-Celtic  revival,  283,  297. 

Pringle,  Thomas,  168. 

Prior,  Matthew,  12.3-126,  256. 

Procter,  Adelaide  Anne,  209. 


INDEX 


331 


Procter,  Bryan  Waller,  166,   167, 

192. 
Provencal  poetry,  12-14,  37. 
Psalms,  the,  23,  54,  93. 
Purcell,  Henry,  117. 
Puritanism.  82,  87,  88, 93,  94, 265, 

266,  271,  295. 
Puttenham,  George,  37,  40. 

Quarles,  Francis,  83,  86,  94. 
Quiller-Couch,  Sir  .\rthur,  291. 

Radcliffe,  Anne,  165. 
Radford,  Dollie,  291. 
Raleigh.  Sir  Walter,  44,  70. 
Ramsay,  .Mian.  136,  143. 
Randoli)h,  Thomas,  S3,  85,  97. 
Rands,  William  IJrighty,  215. 
Raphael,  229. 
Renaissance,  36,  38,  68,  75,  80,  81, 

109,  149.  295.  297,  299. 
"  Renaissance  of  wonder,"  149,  297. 
Rererdic,  17. 

Reynolds.  John  Hamilton,  185. 
"Rhaps(Hli.sLs"  the.  264,  274-279. 
Rhythm,    "the    es.sential    fact    of 

pfx.-try."  2. 
Rich,  ijml,  59. 
Riddles,  the  Anglo-Saxon,  11. 
Robin.son,  Clcnicnf.  42. 
Robinson.  Mary.  148. 
Rochester,  Karl  of.  .Jolm  Wiimot, 

120,  121,  123. 
Rwhford,  I.,ord,  40. 
Rogers,  Samuel,  147,  151.  183. 
Rotieslon.  TlH)mas  William.  282. 
Romanticism,  I'M,  140;  discussed, 

U9,  ].',(),  157,  l.';9.  160.  173;  tlie 

newer,  228.  231,  2.32.  2.37.  263; 

the  new  feltic,   280,  286.  295, 

296. 
Rondeau,  39,  2.'>7. 


Rondel  or  roundel,  17,  29,  49,  244, 

257. 
Roscommon,  Earl  of,  102,  119. 
Ross,  .\lexander,  144. 
Rossetti,  Christina,  209,  '233,  234. 
Rossetti,  Dante  Gabriel,  86,   210, 

229-233,  239,  246,  247,  253,  257, 

262,  285.  286,  297. 
Ros.setti,  W.  M.,  230. 
Rota  or  rondel,  17-29. 
Roundelay,  49. 
Rowlands,  Samuel,  71. 
Rowley,"  "Thomas,  138. 
Rudyerd,  Sir  Benjamin,  82. 
Ruskin,  John,  215,  221,  230,  236, 

240. 
Russell,   George   William,  — "A. 

E.,"  284.  285. 

Saccharissa  (Lady  Dorothy  Sid- 
ney), 114,  115. 

Saintsbury,  G.,  116,  117,  122. 

Salt,  H.  S.,  248. 

Sandys,  George,  95. 

Sapi)ho,  1,  90,  208. 

Satire,  5,  23,  127,  147,  167,  173. 

Savage,  Richard.  136. 

Scheliing,  V.  E.,  45,  58,  113. 

Schumann,  15(i. 

S<-oi).  11. 

Scott,  Sir  Walter.  117.  1.57.  159, 
160.  162,  164.  183.  187.  188,  192, 
228. 

Scott.  William  I!,  il,  i.'ll.  234. 

Sedley.  Sir  (  harhs.  120-123. 

Seliucourl.  H..  de.  141. 

Srfitrnariii.s,  22,  44. 

Sestina,  52. 

Shadwi-ll.  Thomas.  122. 

Shakesp«-are.  William.  3.  41,  48,  60, 
61.  (;:!  (u.  70,  74.  77.  82-84.  89, 
lul,  II.-,.  131,  145,  147.  196,2.32, 


332 


INDEX 


247,    250,   280,   286,   293,   294, 

2!)(). 
Sharp,     AVilliam     ("Fiona     Mac- 

leod"),  229,  24(5,  264,  285,  286. 
Sharp,  Mrs.  William,  286. 
Shelley,  Percy  Bysshe,  97,  107, 137, 

149, 169, 173-178,  182,  183,  190, 

203,  228,  241,  242,  248,  252,  276, 

280,  296. 
Shenstone,  William,  133. 
Sherborne,  Sir  Edward,  105,  117. 
Sheridan,  Richard    Brinslcy,    208, 

281. 
Shirley,  James,  85,  86,  117,  118. 
Sidney,  Sir  Philip,  42,  43,  45,  47, 

49,  51-58,  60,  61,  64,  70,  75,  80, 

82,  89,  114,  293. 
Sigerson,    Dora     (Mrs.    Shorter), 

281,  285,  291. 
Skeat,  W.  W.,  138. 
Skelton,  John,  30,  32. 
Skinner,  John,  144. 
Skipsey,  Joseph,  216. 
Skirving,  Adam,  144. 
Slender,  Cousin  Abraham,  41. 
Smart,  Christopher,  137. 
Smith,  Alexander,  188,  235. 
Smith,  Charlotte,  86,  132. 
Smith,  Horace,  167. 

Smith,  James,  167. 

Somerset,  Edward,  40. 

Song,  an  essentiil  element  of  the 
lyric,  1;  the  folk,  11,  12,  16,  19- 
21,  94,  143,  145,  185;  mediaeval, 
12-35;  books  of,  43, .51,  73,  74, 
143,  145,  165,  166;  pastoral,  47, 
48;  Elizabethan  gift  of,  70-72; 
writers  of,  73-74:  in  drama  and 
masque,  83-86,  116,  117,  129; 
later  books  of ,  1 1 7, 1 18 ;  of  Blake, 
140;  Scottish  traditional  and 
other,  143-145,  158,185;  popular 


pre- Victorian,  165-167;  in  drama 
of  liic  Elizabethan  revival,  190- 
192;  of  Tennyson,  197;  of  l?rf)wn- 
ing,  204-206; of  social  reform  and 
unrest,  215,  216;  sacred,  219; 
revolutionary,  240;  power  of,  in 
Thompson,  276;  patriotic.  287, 
289. 

Song-book,  the  Elizabethan,  51,  73, 
74,  117,  118,  143;  revival  of  the, 
165,  166. 

Sonnet,  the,  introduced  from  Italy, 
37;  influences  of  Dante  and  Pe- 
trarch on,  38-40,  41,  75;the  Eliz- 
abethan, 52,  58-65,  67,  68;  on 
religious  themes,  61,62;  of  Shake- 
.speare,  64,  65,  67,  71;  in  Stuart 
times,  75,  86,  94;  emancipation 
of  the,  by  Milton,  109-111;  a 
criterion  of  poetic  spirit,  131;  re- 
vival of,  131-133,  136,  139;  the 
Wordsworthian,  152,  153,  168, 
183,  185;  of  Keats,  181;  of  Mrs. 
Browning,  208;  of  Rossetti,  232, 
233;  of  war,  235;  244,  266. 

Sophocles,  110. 

Southerne,  Thomas,  127. 

Southey,  Caroline  Bowles,  167. 

Southey,  Robert,  160,  192. 

Southwell,  Father,  54-56,  93. 

"Spasmodic  school,"  the,  215,  235. 

Spenser,  Edmund,  42,  43,  46-49, 
61,  64,  70,  76,  81,  82,  85,  106- 
108,  114,  133.  134,  175,  196,  265, 
271.  280,  293. 

Spiritualism,  251,  268,  271,  275. 

Stanihurst,  Richard,  45. 

Stanley,  Thomas,  97,  99,  105. 

Stanza,  80,  133. 

Stephen,  James  Kenneth,  217. 

Sterling,  Jolm,  210. 

Sternhold,  Thomas,  93. 


INDEX 


333 


Stevenson,  Robert  Louis,  215,  258- 

260,  281. 
Stillingfleet,  Benjamin,  132. 
Stirling,  Earl  of,  73.  75. 
Strong,  Charles,  1G8. 
Suckling,   Sir  John,   99-101,    112, 

295. 
Supernatural,  the,   142,  15G,  158, 

182,  234,  271,  280,  282,  297. 
Surrey,  Henry,  Earl  of,  34,  37,  39, 

43.  44,  58,  93,  293. 
Swift,  Jonathan,  128,  134. 
Swinburne,  Algernon  Charles,  97, 

1C6,  193,  229,  230,  239-248,  252, 

255,  257,  2G2,  2C4,  289,  297,  298. 
Sylvester,  Joshua,  71. 
Symons,  Arthur.  137,  141,  lOG,  175. 

2G4,  2G5,  289,  290. 

Tabley,  Lord  de,  240. 

Tannahill.  Robert,  147,  185. 

Taylor,  Ann.  IGH. 

Taylor,  Jane.  1G8. 

Taylor,  Sir  Henry,  192,  193. 

Tennyson,  Alfred,  Lord,  193-202, 

213,  214,  217,  220  222,  220.  227, 

237,  238,  240,  245.  248,  25G,  202, 

2G5,  287,  297,  2;)8. 
Ti-nnyson,  Frederick,  195. 
Tertullian,  110. 
Ti'Tza-rima,  47. 
Thfwkeray,  William    Makepeace, 

215. 
ThcfKritus.  108. 
Thorn,  William.  185. 
Th<.tni)s<.n.  Eranci.s,  204,205.274- 

277,  279. 
Thom.son.  C.  L.,  2H. 
Th<imson.  James,    131,    13.3.    134, 

1V9,  2K1. 
Thomson,  James    ("B.  V.'"),  248, 

249. 


Thornbury,  W^alter,  216. 
Tonson,  Jacob,  128. 
ToticVs  Miscellani/,  41.  42. 
Tourneur,  Cyril,  191. 
Traherne.  Thomas,  98,  99. 
Transcendentalism,  284. 
Trencli,  Herbert,  291. 
Trench,  Richard  Chenevix,  210. 
Triolet,  29,  257. 
Trochaics,  50. 

Troubadovrs,  12-14,  18,  37,  293. 
Trouveres,  12,  18,  27,  293. 
Tu[)pcr,  Martin  Farquhar,  232. 
Turberville,  George,  44. 
Turner,  Charles  Tennyson,  195. 
Tyndall.  John.  221. 
Tytler,  Patrick  Fraser,  144. 

Unwin,  Mary,  139. 
Upham,  A.  II.,  GO. 

Vaughan,    Henry,    95,    97,    98, 
295. 

Vaughan.  Thomas,  97,  105. 

Vaux,  Thoma.s,  Lord,  40. 

\'ere,  F^dward  de,  see  Oxford,  Earl 
of. 

Vere,  Sir  .Vubrey  <le.  1G8. 

Vere,  Aubrey  de  (the  younger), 
211,  2K1. 

Vergil,  lOH. 

V«'rlaine.  290. 

Verse,  2,  3;  macaronic.  15;  amoe- 
bn-an,  20;  forms  of,  in  the  Mid- 
dle Ages.  22,  24.  25,  29,  .30;  early 
Tudor,  3G;  Eli/.abelliaii  forms  of. 
37-39;  pr<'valen<-e  of  iambic.  44; 
theories  and  exj)eriments  in  cliLss- 
ical.  44,  45.  73;  imit.-itioii  of 
Italian,  37.  5()-52.  54.  5!),  00.  08, 
(ii).  75;  titles  of  Elizabethan  lyri- 
cal forms,  49,  50;   octo.syllabic, 


331 


INDEX 


50,  IGl,  181;  ingenuity  in,  of  the 
Caroline  age,  9G,  105;  unortho- 
dox, 101,  H)i;  irreguUir,  in  the 
ode,  103,  104.;  of  the  Restoration, 
114;  trochaic  substitution  in  iam- 
bic, 130;  Popean,  139;  of  Christa- 
bel,  156;  Lamb's  use  of  irreguhir, 
161,  16£;  octosyllabic,  of  Keats, 
181 ;  use  of,  in  refrain,  190;  theory 
and  practice  of  Patraore  in,  213; 
hexameter,  of  Clough,  224;  of 
Arnold,  221 ;  technique  of  Swin- 
burne's, 240,  244;  revival  of 
French  forms  in,  257,  258; 
Bridges'  theory  of,  268. 

Vers  de  societe,  7,  28,  discussion  of, 
91,  92;  99,  100,  101,  114,  120, 
124.  127,  163,  188,  215,  216,  256; 
and  Mr.  Dobson,  258,  269. 

Via  media,  the,  218;  the  poetical, 
219. 

Victoria,  Queen,  187,  190, 192, 193, 
221. 

Villanelle,  257,  266. 

Villon,  Frangois,  15,  261. 

Viviani,  Emily,  175. 

Wade,  Thomas,  183,  190. 
Waddington,  Samuel,  132.  262. 
Walker,  H.,  218. 
Waller,  Edmund,  83,  89,  101,  102, 

104,  105,  112,  113,  114,  117,  120, 

123,  295,  296. 
Walpole,  Horace,  120. 
Walsh,  Edward,  282. 
Walsh,  William,  131,  132. 
Walsingham,  Sir  Francis,  59. 
Walton,  Isaak,  100. 
Ward,  T.  H.,  232. 
Warren,  John  Byrne  Leicester.  See 

Tablcy,  Lord  de. 
Warton.'  Thomas,  131,  132,  130. 


Watson,  James,  143. 

Watson,  Thomas,  43. 45, 50, 51. 52. 

80. 
Watson,  William,  265.  266.  268, 

269,  270,  279,  287. 
Watts,  Isaac,  136. 
Watts-Dunton,  T.,  150,  233. 
Webster,  Augusta  Davies,  210. 
Webster,  John,  83,  191. 
Weekes,  Charles,  285. 
Weelkes,  Thomas,  51,  74. 
Wells,  Charles  Jeremiah,  183,  190, 

191,  192,  193. 
Wertherism,  227. 
Wesley,  Charles,  136. 
Wesley,  John,  136. 
Westbrook,  Harriet,  174. 
Weygandt,    C,    264,    265,    271, 

284. 
Whalley,  Peter,  82. 
White,  Blanco,  168. 
White,  Henry  Kirke,  168. 
Whitehead.  William,  136. 
Whitman,  Walt,  162. 
Wilbye,  John,  51. 
Wilde,  Oscar,  246,  247. 
William  IH,  120,  124. 
Wilson,  Alexander,  144. 
Winchilsea,  Anne  Finch,  Countess 

of,  131. 
Wither,  George,  81,  93,    94.  119, 

161,  214,  267. 
Wolsey,  Cardinal,  33. 
Woodberry,  G.  E.,  243. 
Woolner,  Thomas,  234. 
Wordsworth,  William,  3,  98,  108, 

131, 139, 141,  148,  149, 151, 152- 

155,  158,  161,  162,  107,  168,  169, 

170,  179,  183,  185,  186,  193, 195, 

196,    203,    224,    228,   232,    251. 

202,    265,    267,   270,   271,   272, 

297. 


INDEX  335 

Wordsworthians.the.  167, 168. 183j  Yeats,  William  Butler,  166,  211, 
185,  195,  210,  224,  227 ;  contem-  i  212,  264,  265,  266,  281,  282,  283, 
porary,  264,  265,  267,  269,  272.    I      284,  285. 

Wyatt,  Sir  Thomas,  34,  37-39,  43,    Yonge,  Nicholas,  51. 
58,  80,  293.  I  Young,  Edward,  ISO,  133. 


CAMBRIDGE  .  MASSACHUSETTS 
U    .    S    .    A 


f    * 


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